Phaseshift
by Verlotorium
Summary: [OCS] What would the story have looked like if the Travelers had never appeared? If Cody and Echidna never existed? What if Coil's second team had been driven by their convictions and honor, rather than duty? What if the Undersiders had found more allies to stand besides them in their times of need? [Crosspost from SB/SV] - WantonConstruct's novelization of my Weaver Dice campaign.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Neither WantonConstruct nor I own Worm. Worm is the property of Wildbow.

* * *

About a year ago, I started running a Weaver Dice Campaign where my players replaced the canon Travelers with their own merry band of mercenaries. What followed was the greatest case of emergent gameplay and character development we'd ever seen, and the player who played Crown ended up starting a novelization on SB.

This is a crosspost to to provide readers of Convergence Theory with some nuance and understanding of the setting Convergence Theory!Taylor originates from.

* * *

The man lying on the couch began to stir slightly from his sleep. He groaned as he opened his eyes and adjusted his vision. His limbs still felt heavy with sleep. As he fixed his gaze up at the ceiling fan and adjusted to consciousness, the first of many questions floated across his mind.

 _Where am I?_

He tried to remember what had happened.

 ** _BLAM_**

He tried to anticipate the gunman's actions, knocking the barrel of the pump action sawed-off shotgun away rom his head. The adrenaline running through his system certainly helped increase his reaction time. He succeeded for the most part, but the shot still grazed him on the right side of his torso. He felt the outside part of lower two ribs on his right side crunch and shatter as the deer slug tore its way through.

The pain was incredible, even after being deadened by the adrenaline. The shock of the impact overrode the natural reaction to scream. He recovered just as the gunman chambered the next round. _About a yard from me, no room to dodge, no cover to duck behind, and he's standing in front of the doorway. Fuck everything._

The gunman leveled the shotgun once more.

 _Shit._

He reached out to redirect the barrel once more

 ** _BLAM_**

This time he was less successful. The second shot broke his collarbone and exited through his back, just knicking the shoulderblade on the way out. Through no small miracle, he did not fall backward. Letting his right arm hang uselessly at his side, he found the strength to swing his left arm at his attacker, barely remembering through the pain to make a fist.

It connected with his attacker's neck, and carried enough force to stagger the foe. The gunman's next shot fired without being aimed.

 ** _BLAM_**

 _CUNT FUCK SHIT FUCKING SON OF A TWO DOLLAR WHORE_

His mind screamed obscenities while his mouth made little more sound than a bloody gurgle. The third shot hit on the inside of his right thigh, and bounced off the femur before exiting, breaking it in the process. Losing balance, he fell forwards against the wall near the doorframe, impacting his already injured right side. The pain from that impact was not nearly as intense as he'd expected however. Which meant he was losing blood, and quickly.

"You're a tenacious fuck, I'll give you that," the assailant said as he primed the weapon once more.

As the gunman took aim once more, the injured man played his last card. Using all the remaining strength he had, he kicked out with his good leg at the leading knee of his opponent, and fell backwards. The shot did not hit center mass.

Instead the impact caused the barrel of the gun to redirect to his left arm.

 ** _BLAM_**

The round smashed straight through the middle of his left upper arm, shattering the bone and nearly severing the limb entirely. He landed on his back, coughing up a fresh glob of blood from the impact.

The gunman moved to stand over his defeated opponent, kicking the fractured limb just for good measure. He leaned over. "Was it worth it? Trying to be a fucking hero?"

A gurgle and a stare was the response he got.

"Well, this is what you fucking get for it. I'd finish you off, but I don't want to waste the round. Just because you chose to die rather tell me where he's hiding doesn't mean I can't still find him. Have fun  
bleeding out."

The gunman closed the door behind him.

 _I can't fucking die here_ thought the injured man. He felt himself losing more blood by the second, and his limbs were failing to respond to instructions. He tried to work his right hand closer to his pocket with his phone in it, try to call 911. _Just….a little...closer...ow…._

His vision began to darken and blur even more. He briefly recalled reading somewhere that the process of actually dying is peaceful, and the brain releases various endorphins and hormones to make the process suck less. Apparently his brain missed that memo; all he felt was rage, fear, and despair.

If only he'd been a little quicker, a little closer, along with a million other little things.

 _Fuck...you…..I….refuse…...to…._

 _I'm fucking dead. I bled out and I died._

He rubbed his eyes again, and tried to come to terms with the conclusion. It didn't work; the anger merely intensified. He looked around at the dilapidated room he found himself in. The paint was peeling off the walls at the ceiling and floor, and there was a strange odor present that he couldn't place.

 _So, this probably isn't hell, and I'm not about to call it heaven, so that makes it purgatory? It'd explain why my arm is back in place._

His thoughts drifted back to the gunman. He found it strange that he couldn't recall the man's face, even though it wasn't hidden. _One would think that'd be a detail I'd remember._ He _did_ recall that the man was big; about 3 inches taller than him, and looked to be around 60 pounds heavier. Considering he himself stood 6'4" and weighed 210 pounds, that was saying something.

He felt the residual anger welling up once more. The strange odor intensified, and was soon joined by the smell of burning plastic. _Where the fuck is that coming from?_

He looked down at his left hand, which was curled into a fist resting on the faux-leather cushion.

 _Ok that's new._

His fist was wreathed in some sort of purple flame, and arcs of electricity danced about inside the substance. He stared at it in disbelief, lifting it off the couch so he wouldn't continue to melt the couch. _Ok, seriously what the fuck. What is this?_

He studied it a little more. _It almost looks like those little plasma doohickeys you buy in museums and-_

He stopped, putting two and two together. _Alright. I have plasma around my hand for some reason. Now how do I g-_

Almost as soon as he formed the thought, the effect was dismissed. _That's pretty handy._

A few minutes of trial and error later, he found that he could shape and concentrate the effect with relative ease around either hand, and more generally, wherever on his body he wished. It didn't feel draining to conjure or dismiss the effect, and took little concentration to maintain it.

He stood up from the couch and stretched a bit, then felt something in his pocket. _A wallet. And a phone._ He reached down and pulled everything out, and began inspecting the contents, laying them out on a nearby coffee table. The phone's date read April 6th, 2011.

 _Driver's license. Social security card. Passport card. $500 in 100s, $300 in 50s, $200 in 20s. And a folded up note._ He picked up the license first. _'_ _Olrikssen, Gabriel Edgar.' That's doesn't sound right. At least I don't...think….so…._

He looked at it a few moments longer before realization hit him like a frieght train.

 _I can't remember my own fucking name. I actually don't know what it should be. Holy fucking shit._ He tried to recall other personal details and found himself wanting in every category. Date of birth, age, family, relatives, friends, birthplace, neighborhoods, homes, girlfriends, schools, field trips, road trips, etc. Nothing. He couldn't recall a single detail about any personal experience he might have had.

Including the identity of the person who's hiding place he died trying to protect.

Even stranger, there were personal details he _could_ recall; he knew which foods he liked and disliked, and what they tasted like, despite not being able to remember a single instance of eating them. He could recall the songs he liked, musicians and bands he was a fan of, movies and books he enjoyed, all without being able to recall any act of actually listening to or seeing or reading anything.

 _What the fuck. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the flying fuck._ 'Gabriel' felt his heart rate quicken, and felt a wave of existential terror washing over him. More alarmingly, he also felt a sheen of plasma begin to form along his neck and shoulders, down to his forearms. He shook his head and concentrated on dismissing the power. He decided to read the note.

Hello Gabriel. Welcome back to the land of the living, specifically Brockton Bay, MA.  
Few men receive second chances at life.  
What will you do with yours?

P.S. a warning: your personality is mostly intact, but your temper  
is notably shorter, and the consequences of losing it are  
…considerable.

 _So I'm not dead. I've just been sewn back together again...somehow...and now can bathe myself in purple fire. Not sure what to make of the second part._

Gabriel walked over to the bathroom and washed his face to try and calm himself down. True to the note's warning, he was feeling an unusual level of anger, although it was understandable. He'd had a man succeed in killing him for all intents and purposes. All the experiences that made up his life had been wrenched from him; the man he was before effectively dead not only to the rest of the world, but to himself.

The shirt he was wearing was slightly burnt from the earlier outburst, so he took it off and ran it under the water for a bit to try and remove some bits of charred material, and deaden the smell. There was one last surprise for him; on his left shoulder there was a sizable tattoo; a large stylized letter 'C'. _Branded like a goddamn bronco to boot. Awesome._

He felt a fresh wave of anger wash over him once more, before a small thunderclap followed the sound of a hard explosive impact shook him. He jumped, looking down at the fresh pool of molten linoleum tiling, in the general direction of where his hand was pointing. It looked rather deep, cut about 5 inches into the floor. _Need to be far more careful, then,_ he thought. _Time to get some food anyway._

 _Look at these clowns_ , the man in the yellow costume thought to himself. He was watching the infamous duo of Uber and Leet mid-job, biding his time for the opportune moment to strike. Currently they were fighting several handfuls of Merchants on enemy turf. And losing. The pair of villains had a earned quite a bad reputation over time, as almost every single crime they pulled backfired, or simply failed.

Impulse watched as Uber and Leet tried in vain to stay on-script and hold back the now sizable tide of encroaching gangsters. Impulse sighed to himself. _Taking on this many guys at once. Really? Cape or no cape, you're gonna have a bad time, especially when half those guys are probably on PCP to boot._

Given their absolutely dismal rate of success, one had to wonder how they stayed active in the first place. There were several factors to consider when answering that question, the first of which was their fanbase. Most of the time, when people commit crimes, it's in the perpetrators' interests to make it quiet. This particular villain pair did exactly the opposite; grandstanding the entire time and _live broadcasts_ for fuck's sake. Even though they had an abysmal success rate, the ad revenue from their fans kept them afloat. One should never underestimate the draw power of good old fashioned schadenfreude.

In addition, each and every job they undertook was performed with a video game theme in mind. Grand Theft Auto, Mario Bros., the Zelda franchise, and so on and so forth. In fact, watching them work, one quickly comes to the conclusion that staying in-character and in-theme is higher priority than actually succeeding with whatever theft or robbery was being perpetrated.

This week, the pair had gone for a Fallout theme. Uber was dressed as an Enclave soldier in modified power armor, while Leet opted for the a reinforced ranger duster. Both had stun guns modeled after laser rifles. Their target this week was the Merchant's 'caps, jet, and psycho.' Unfortunately for them, they'd underestimated how much resistance due to sheer manpower they were going to encounter. After about 5 minutes, the pair were signing off in full retreat.

Impulse had located the getaway vehicle, and stood waiting just out of sight, his entire body coiled like a spring. The live broadcast had cut short, and he estimated it would be roughly 90 seconds before Leet rounded the corner. He was after one thing and one thing only; the Pip-boy 3000 replica that Leet had constructed. _Definitely could try and hawk that for a pretty penny; certainly know of a few people who'd be more than willing to part with upwards of $1500 just for the novelty of the thing._

Massive clanking footsteps told Impulse his quarry had arrived. Leet paused for breath while Uber began removing his armor.

 _Now._

Impulse kicked off, accelerating nigh instantaneously to his top speed, a bright blue stream trailing him. Leet had no time at all to react as Impulse lunged and tackled him to the ground. The armor Leet was wearing prevented the blow from outright breaking several ribs, but he was no doubt going to be sore for several days after the fact. After the initial impact, the pair skidded for several yards along the concrete, the NCR leather duster taking the brunt of the damage.

During the skid, Impulse had set about removing Leet's Pip-boy; it was secured very simply in fact. Only clamped around his arm by rudimentary mechanical locks in two places. Impulse had it removed in all of 2.3 seconds. Of course, to him, it felt more like 10, but then again, he was the speedy one. Pip-Boy in hand, he was effectively home free.

Taking off down the street, he ducked in and out of several side streets, changing direction almost at random. Even if they had been following him from the start in a vehicle, even with Uber's ability to pick up any talent on a whim and hone it to peak-human levels in minutes, they wouldn't be able to catch him. Some of the streets and alleys were simply too narrow for a car to fit through, and Uber's power didn't let him break the laws of physics.

Impulse however, could. He took another hard turn and the blur behind him kinked at a perfect right angle.

He took a few more precautions to make sure that there was no possibility of being tailed, and triple checked to make sure he was in one of the CCTV blind spots before removing his costume. As he returned to his apartment, he inspected his new ill-gotten bauble. _Looks like it could work well enough. Alright mister thingy, lets see how much potential buyers think you're worth._

Johnny had gotten about halfway through drafting up a description when the device's screen emitted a loud *pop*. Recovering from the initial shock, Johnny inspected the device. Sure enough, the screen had been destroyed completely, along with what looked like the motherboard. The casing of the device also had a few nasty cracks in it.

Whether intentionally or not (Leet's power limitation meant many of his devices failed in spectacular fashion should they resemble too closely something he's previously constructed), the Pip boy was rendered worthless.

 _Goddammit. Fuck. There goes my afternoon._ He sat back, feeling more than a little annoyed. _Welp, time is money, time to find a plan B._

"Quite a disappointing result indeed, Mr. Quick."

Johnny nearly fell out of his chair. He righted himself, and studied his new guest. She was a vaguely mediterranean woman, possibly late 20s to early 30s, dressed in a tailored suit and fedora, holding a briefcase. When she spoke, her voice was eerily neutral, with no hints of an accent of any kind. Johnny began speaking in a rapid, panicked manner.

"...How'd you get in my house?" he asked tentatively.

"If I was here to kill you, you'd already be dead," she said. She spoke with a pointed assurance that was characteristic of someone completely confident in their abilities. _Either she's serious, or she's got the world's best poker face_ , thought Johnny. He was inclined to believe the former. _And she still didn't answer my question._

"What do you want from me then?" he asked.

"That is the wrong question. I will ask you the right one. What do you desire in this world?"

Johnny thought for a second.

 _12.9 seconds. New personal best._ Johnny was panting a bit with the effort. _Not bad for a freshman._

The good feeling did not last very long. He could almost hear the dismissive voice of his mother as if she were standing next to him. ' _One in a million even have a chance to be decent. You're definitely not that one.' Yeah, fuck you too mom._ She'd never supported him through any of his efforts, and that pattern didn't change when he started to show an interest in track & field. But his mother's active discouragement in most instances was preferable to his father's silence.

His mother held a managerial position at the DMV. His father had been collecting benefits for the past 18 months after losing his position at the steel mill. They were average people living average lives for Buffalo, NY, and they did their damndest to make sure Johnny knew what life had in store for him. Disappointment was a bitter, _bitter_ , pill to swallow. Hopefully reduced expectations could reduce the inevitable pain. That was the plan, anyway.

Truth be told, Johnny _did_ have a bit of a penchant for running. At least the results of last couple of meets were telling him so. He'd placed at worst 4th in each one, and won two of them. _One of those wins was against a_ senior, he remembered.

It didn't matter. His parents wouldn't give him credit for it. They'd point out that the competition he was facing locally was crap; that he'd get wrecked in the county and state level competitions.

Which was sort of true in hindsight. He'd made it to the state qualifiers in his freshman year, but didn't get anywhere past that. Sophomore and junior years went better, but Johnny still failed to place at the state level tournament. The only thing that pissed him off more than losing was the face his mother made; the face that said 'I told you so.' He couldn't stand it.

He practiced even harder in his senior year. He told himself that he wouldn't lose. He couldn't lose. He had to prove his parents wrong.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, his desire to win caused him to take some rather unnecessary risks. During April of that year, one of those risks would end his career; he refused to stop training despite the arrival of a violent lightning storm.

The bolt struck his spine, and he collapsed onto the ground mid stride. Strangely enough, the impact of the strike on his back almost didn't hurt at all. Johnny laid on the ground a few more moments in relief before the realization hit him.

 _I can't feel my legs. I can't move them_

 _I'm paralyzed. I'm motherfucking PARALYZED._

A lifetime's worth of despair hit him like a tidal wave. Everything that he'd been working for was taken from him in that lapse of judgement. It was gone.

Then came the pain. He felt as if he'd been stabbed in the dead center of every muscle in his legs. Lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating an impossibly huge figure. It appeared to move _through_ itself in mind-boggling rotations, shifting and morphing in a nauseating fashion. And it was _massive_ ; galaxies would have been like cells in comparison, spanning distances that were simply too large to contemplate.

And as quickly as the pain and visions came, they were gone. Johnny tried to move his lower body once more, and found that not only did it respond, but he felt _alive_ in a way that he'd never felt before. He got up, and felt the urge to run; the destination didn't matter. He took off, at a speed not attainable by normal humans. He matched cars on the highway.

He was going to keep running, and never look back.

The woman waited patiently for Johnny's response while he contemplated.

"Its going to sound like a bad cliche, but I wanna be in control of my own future, damn it. I spent most of my life listening to people tell me what I can't do. Fuck that noise."

The woman nodded, then handed over the suitcase she was carrying.


	2. Chapter 2

1.2

 _Hmmm, what to do, what to do indeed,_ thought Petyr, as he went over the various reaction chains laid out on the table. The _ding_ of the microwave caught his attention, and he stood up to retrieve the TV dinner. He turned back towards his workstation, and began eating. Once finished, he turned to grab a timer, and set it for 2 hours from now. _Should be enough time,_ he thought.

Petyr looked over the blood bags on the rack. _Five quarts should do for trial 7, leaving me enough for another batch of sedative pellets after this afternoon's drawing._ He set about double checking his calculations just to be sure. Satisfied, he set about cleaning his weapon. It was a secondhand paintball gun he'd purchased online, but it suited his needs well enough. Hadn't jammed yet, and packed enough punch to deliver his pellets at a range of up to 400 feet, by his estimate. _Might have to get my hands on a real weapon one of these days_ , he thought belatedly.

He initiated the preliminary steps of his next batch, when the doorbell rang. He stood up to go meet his new guest.

The man who stood outside was, in a word, striking. His hair was all spiked, being longer towards the crown of his head, and colored with red, orange, and yellow so as to give the illusion of a flame emanating from his head. The man's suit was a jarring purple, with a blue dress shirt underneath. On anyone else, the getup would have looked downright stupid. He made it look _good_.

"I'm here about the borscht recipe," the man stated.

 _So this is the guy_ thought Petyr. He'd been dropping small hints on some of the more unsavory corners of the web that he'd needed some assistance for a few jobs. Parahuman assistance. The borscht recipe was the cover phrase he'd settled on. A week ago, a secure channel with one 'SixThousandLumens' was opened, and he'd agreed to at least showing up and hearing the pitch. _All things working out, it's one down, two to go_ he mentally noted. He'd figured a four-man team to start with should be more than enough; better to err on the side of caution.

"The trick is to use 3 beets per serving instead of two," Petyr responded.

"And likewise, should I add an extra teaspoon of salt?"

"A half teaspoon. The balance is delicate."

"And thus a half teaspoon more pepper as well."

Petyr relaxed, as the codephrase was completed. "Come on in then," he said. The other man walked inside, and found a clean spot to lay down his suitcase. Petyr turned to lock the door again, and walked towards the center of the living room to properly greet his new guest.

"Name's Petyr Stanovic. In the field, I'm Artificer."

"Leo Pallas, a.k.a. Antares." The two men shook hands, and Leo began unpacking.

-

"Good fucking lord," exclaimed Leo, as he checked his twitter account. "I'm inactive for ONE day. Not even. 18 hours actually. I'm inactive for 18 hours and I lose 750 followers. What the fuck."

He neglected to mention that his total following on twitter alone dwarfed that amount by about 3 orders of magnitude.

Petyr half laughed and half snorted. "What makes these people so important to you? You've never even met them. And before you say anything, no, I don't believe that you know who each of those people are or even that you know who a quarter of a percent of them are. And I mean outside of twitter." Leo shot back a look of indignation.

"You may be correct in your assessment that I do not personally know these people, but that does not diminish the role they play."

"And what, pray tell, might that role be?" Petyr's tone dripped with sarcasm.

Leo was quick to answer. "Can you not see it?" he stated, gesticulating towards himself in his unusual getup. "I'm an artist. Those followers? They are my audience. And twitter is the medium."

Petyr raised an eyebrow, and began preparing several syringes. The timer was due to go off any minute. "Really? How?"

Leo rolled his eyes. "How are tabloids still a thing? Gossip is a powerful force, good sir. I'm tapping into two of the many parts of the human condition. The first is narcissism. Everyone loves to hear themselves talk, and self aggrandize. You build a platform specifically for that purpose and people will flock to it. The second is a sense of vicarious living. How many people out there wish they were someone else, either because that someone else has more money or power or skill or something along those lines than they do? I bet you have at least once in your life. It's a ubiquitous emotion.

"So, I have a bit of a knack for fashion and self-photography. But that's not the true art that I'm practicing. The art, the skill, comes in using that in tandem with a platform to effectively gossip about oneself, and develop a persona; a catchphrase here, a grammatical quirk there, and before you know it, hundreds of thousands of people are following you. I've made complete strangers relate to and care far too much about the mostly utterly vapid nonsense that comes out of my ass, AND they feel as if it has enriched their lives in some measure. Even if it is completely a placebo effect, the impact is anything but. I've done my job."

Petyr sat there, a bit stunned. "Well shit. Never thought about it that way. I guess you do have a point."

The timer went off, catching Petyr's attention. He got up and went over to his setup to begin the drawing process. He turned towards Leo. "If you're squeamish, now would be the time to leave the room."

Several minutes passed in silence. He was about to begin drawing the last half pint, when Leo broke the silence loudly and unexpectedly. Petyr swore as he missed the vein and went to try again.

"Holy shit why does it smell like Nurgle's asshole all of the sudden?"

Leo walked back into the main room and proceeded to dry heave as the smell got worse. "God dammit that is fucking _foul._ The hell are you making?"

"Oh shit; sorry, byproducts of the process." He pointed to a small box with two knobs on it. "Crank that knob on the left to 5 for about a minute. Ozone generator; if there's an odor it won't neutralize, I haven't come across it yet. Should help."

Petyr finished the final drawing, and checked that the current titration step was indeed going smoothly. Satisfied that it would need no more personal attention for at least the next 3 hours, he went to make himself another meal.

-

Gabriel went to a bar near the Boardwalk; not his first choice for lunch, but the fish sandwich advertised sounded enticing, and the venue was nice and quiet. Not too many people. He needed to clear his head.

Or deliberately fog it up with alcohol. The second option was looking better right about now.

 _Holy shit that sandwich was good. Exactly what I needed._ He'd ordered a third pint just as a woman dressed in a sharp suit sat down next to him.

"You shouldn't order a fourth, Gabriel."

 _What._ Gabriel stopped mid sip and slowly turned to her. "How do you know my name?"

"The 'how' is of no consequence to you. The 'why' should be your primary concern."  
Gabriel felt a headache coming on as he tried to piece together any sensible chain of events that would lead to this woman showing up here with knowledge of his name. Of course, the retrograde amnesia meant that he had no information whatsoever to go on. Sighing he picked his gaze off the table and looked at the woman once more.

"Fine, I'll bite. _Why_ are you here?"

"You're a parahuman. I'm here to offer you employment."

Gabriel blinked. "I...guess that explains this morning." _Wait, fuck, that's probably not something that should be common knowledge to everyone in here._ "Why'd you just announce that to everyone in here?"

The corners of the woman's mouth turned up slightly. "No one heard."

Gabriel turned around quickly, looking for eavesdroppers. Strangely enough, there was no one else in the place; even the bartender was out of sight. "Where'd everybody go?"

"The elderly gentleman left 53 seconds ago. The two who were in the far corner are now copulating in the women's bathroom, and the bartender is taking a small smoke break. The security cameras do not pick up sound. We will have precisely 2 minutes and 37 seconds of continued privacy from the end of this sentence." She produced a small stack of paperwork before continuing.

"Documents for tax purposes so as to not draw undue attention."

Gabriel quickly looked through them. _Aside fromt the fact that this woman also_ _ **somehow**_ _knew all of my personal info and shit, this company looks about as legit as a 3 dollar bill._

He looked back at her. "Tell me something, does the IRS just not give a shit anymore, or did you scare them or something?"

"Yes."

Gabriel frowned. "Funny," he said with absolutely zero humor in his voice. "I'm not a criminal. Why would I go along with this?"

"You do not have the heart of a criminal, no. But as unpalatable as this option is, it is your best. Your powers are suited towards offence, not defence. You will have much more success striking out at predators than protecting their intended prey."

Gabriel grimaced. "Why wouldn't I just go work with the police or something like that?"

The woman smiled again. "You could do something like that. But it won't work out the way you think it will."

"Why?"

"The man who attempted to assassinate you was a captain in the Philadelphia Police Department. The level of corruption in the Brockton Bay PRT is not quite that egregious, but nonetheless disheartening."

Gabriel felt like the ambient temperature in the bar dropped a full 20 degrees. "Why did he kill me?"

The woman got up to begin leaving. "Our time is nearly up. The answers to that question and the plethora of others you have will do you no favors. Don't waste your time looking for them; they're worlds away now."

The woman left and turned abruptly down the next street. _Step 76981 complete._

-

Impulse had donned his costume, and was waiting mock-impatiently for the rest of the guys to put theirs on. He'd gone for a yellow bodysuit with splashes of red and black, which ended in a hood and built-in domino mask. _I wish I remember which one of those books in my house I got the idea from,_ he thought to himself.

Artificer had loaded up his pressurized air tanks and custom feeding system for the paintball gun, and was securing his kevlar vest. Next came the mask, and finally a gray overcoat. _I give it a 6/10._

Antares had gone into the bathroom, and 7 minutes later came out looking like an _entirely_ different person, even without a mask. Not only had he completely changed his skin tone, he also managed to alter the apparent shape, depth, and location of almost every feature of his face. His nose looked wider and shorter, his eyes seemed to be set further apart, and his chin's profile looked considerably narrower. _He said he'd fooled facial recognition programs before_ , Impulse thought to himself as he looked at the completely new person in front of him. _Still looks completely ridiculous though._ Antares rounded out the ensemble with….4 cans of shaving cream. And an umbrella. Antares caught Impulse's incredulous gaze.

"They're extremely necessary! The 5'o'clock shadow has a nasty habit of showing up at the worst times in the evening," he offered.  
 _Ok what the fuck. If he goes down I'm not going back to help him._

Gabriel had donned his costume which consisted of nothing more than a one-way full-face mirror mask. He'd even picked it up this morning from a CVS. _Can't necessarily blame the guy, he's only been here for two days. Not enough time for a proper costume._

"So did you pick a name yet?" Impulse asked, as everyone seemed just about ready to go.

"Nothing permanent. Can't think of a good one. But for now? 'Jace Beleren.'"

Impulse laughed. "That's both stupid _and_ on the nose. Impressive."  
Jace held up a middle finger in response. "We ready to go then? Who's got the picture?"

Artificer grabbed the folded up photo out of his pocket. "Alright. The job description is as follows: find this asshole, tail him back to the warehouse he's going back to, and because apparently Coil _really_ doesn't like his face in particular, and 'render the premises unusable' I think was the phrase he used. Then we get 6 grand total, or 1.5 a piece."

Impulse chuckled. He wasn't really paying attention to anything their new 'employer' had said throughout the call. _The guy had quite the flair for the melodramatic though. Got the 'mysterious benefactor of unknown assets and abilities' act pretty well. There are worse ways to make 1500 bucks in a night._

Impulse sighed again. _Wonder what bug crawled up plasma-boy's ass though. Seemed ready to reach through the phone and choke the bastard if he could._

He stretched again, and shook his arms out as they piled into Artificer's 'rape van' as he affectionately called it. Tinted windows and everything, yet on the smaller side, with a neutral gray color.

They proceeded to pull out of the garage, and headed into the outskirts of Empire territory to hunt their mark.

-

They'd camped out for about 40 minutes before spotting their target: a medium sized man with a shaven head and a shoulder-length brown beard, with an "E88" tattoo on his left forearm. That, unfortunately, described a good portion of the Empire's ranks. What set this particular man apart though, was an unfinished 'USMC' tattoo on his right forearm. It was common knowledge that he was dishonorably discharged. The artist who started the tattoo refused to finish it upon learning the circumstances of the discharge.

Even within the Empire, he didn't have too many friends.

About an hour or so later, the man of the hour began to leave on his motorcycle. Thanks in no small part to how loud the motorcycle was, Artificer had managed to tail the mark while leaving him about half a block of room. After a few twists and turns, their mark had arrived at his destination. Artificer parked a fair distance away, and out of sight.

Their approach on foot was made easier thanks to the absence of working streetlamps. Stray bullets from years of crime had rendered nearly half the lamps in this part of town bulbless, and the city did not have the funds nor the manpower to address that issue. They reached the warehouse undetected.

The building was in roughly the same condition as it's neighbors; the windows were either broken or boarded up, the fences and locks had rusted considerably, and the signs and banners had faded to the point of illegibility. Judging by the plethora of graffiti and the number of bullets still lodged in the walls, this particular block was recently contested territory.

"Remember, non-lethal takedowns if you can help it; boss specifically said to keep the bodies to a minimum," Artificer spoke. "Impulse, how quickly can you take care of the cars on this block?"

Impulse had slashed all four tires of each car on the block in under 8 seconds. "That quickly," he said.

"Impulse and I will wait out front here. Antares and Jace, head 'round back, and see if you can't take a look at the power supply to the building or something," said Artificer. Jace and Antares both nodded and walked off.

Jace took care to quietly remove a good section of the fencing preventing entry into the side alley, using one finger as an improvised plasma torch, and Antares caught the newly freed section of metal before it could fall to the floor. The noise that would make would be quite counterproductive.

At the back of the warehouse stood two rather large looking generators. A quick glance upward showed that the normal power line connections had fallen into disrepair a while ago, and the city did not seem to keen on supplying power to unused buildings. In addition, there was what Antares thought was some sort of jury-rigged boiler unit supplying heat to the warehouse. _Gonna take a wild guess and say that probably isn't up to code,_ he thought absently.

Jace turned to Antares. "Any thoughts on how you want to go about this?"

"Well, that heating contraption I should be able to use to advantage," Antares responded.

"Ok, well, I'm going to see what I can do with those generators," said Jace as he walked over to one of them.

They were fairly large units, each rated to 30 kilowatts. _Well, here's to hoping they didn't invest in surge protection of any kind,_ he thought to himself as he began scoring the insulation around main power line leading into the building. He focused and created a small field of plasma around his hands, concentrating and separating the free ions, before gripping the exposed wire. He focused as much as he could on _shoving_ the plasma as additional current into the warehouses system.

He was feeling for resistance or skips in the flow, signs that either the circuit breakers had in fact done their job, or hopefully (Jace thought to himself) an electrical fire had started. Unfortunately, he failed to pay attention to his surroundings, as two _large_ shadows came into his view. _Menja and Fenja, each about 12 feet tall,_ Jace thought. He'd read up on the E88 known cape roster, but hadn't thought this particular location would have been worthy of cape defense.

He was quickly disabused of that notion as Fenja jabbed at him with her sword. He narrowly managed to dodge it before her twin landed a hit with her spear. The hit was a glancing one at best, but it still left a gash on the left side of his torso.

At the other corner, Antares had been focusing on the makeshift boiler. He'd been wearing down the casing in key locations, accelerating the rate at which the metal rusted, and adding just a little more chaos to the internal combustion process. He'd finished the sabotage right as Fenja and Menja had showed up, and figured now was the time to leave if he wanted to remain in one piece. Feeling with his power that the system had become well and truly volatile, he began to leave.

 _Wait, shit, how long before that mess explodes? Hmmm...better safe than sorry..._

"25 seconds!" he called towards Jace as he ran in the other direction, back towards the building's front.

-

Artificer didn't quite know when he began to feel as queasy as he did, but the sensation quickly crossed the threshold from 'annoying' to 'problematic.' _Last time I eat pad thai before starting a job,_ he resolved. He put his hands on his knees momentarily to try and combat the sensation; he couldn't afford the distraction, especially right now.

He thought he heard something getting louder, but couldn't quite place the sound. It sounded like it was on the very edge of his hearing range. He tried looking around for the source of the sound, and turned around just in time to catch the sight of a kama coming straight at his head. He didn't manage to avoid the hit, but he did manage to lean away from it so that his mask took the brunt of the impact.

His mask split in a jagged line, and managed to absorb most of the energy from the strike. Instead of cleaving straight through the crown of his skull, the blade simply left a nasty gash. Recovering, he took a second to figure out who hit him.

The assailant sported a blonde buzzcut and a metal cage around her face. _Cricket,_ thought Artificer. _That's where the nausea was coming from._ Cricket had earned her namesake for the sound she emitted whenever she fought, and the incredibly quick reflexes that she possessed.I

Artificer pulled himself together enough to fire a burst of sedative rounds at her at basically point blank range. Cricket didn't feel like getting hit, and so ducked underneath the line of fire mere fractions of a second after the trigger was pulled. She moved her torso considerably faster than should have been physically possible for even an elite athlete, and before Artificer allowed the trigger to return to it's original position, she'd begun another kama swipe.

Impulse made sure it didn't hit. He went to tackle Cricket with a brisk running start, already primed to test out his ground'n'pound skills.

 _Fuck you bitch, I'm not afraid to hit a girl, and I can't really fuck up your face any worse than it already how did you fucking dodge that_

Impulse's train of thought derailed as he rolled to his feet, the stream fading. Cricket managed to backflip ( _fucking showoff_ ) out of his dive, and turned his attention on him. The sound of a thunderclap ripped through the air, making all the combatants jump.

-

Jace looked up at the two giantesses decked out like valkyries in front of him. _Whatever Antares did, it's going to happen in less than half a minute, and I don't think I want to be here when it does,_ he thought.

 _I could try to go through them._ He looked to the right at the warehouse wall. _Or, I could try and take a shortcut through the building. No idea if this is going to work, but fuck it, if nothing else it furthers the primary goal of property damage._

He dug into his power, turned and _fired_. A good chunk of it had been removed; large enough for him to duck through, but too small for Fenja and Menja to follow. Without further wrecking the building of course. He ran through the newly created entrance and immediately regretted his decision.

The plan to start an electrical fire inside the premises had worked; several of the chemicals the E88 was working with had been next to a cooling unit that had been fried, and three goons were working to try and put out the flames with fire extinguishers. They weren't having much success, and the noxious fumes being released into the air weren't helping. One of them had turned at the sound of the explosion, drew his magnum and fired. _That_ endeavor had been considerably more successful, and the bullet struck Jace in the left side of his torso, bouncing off of and breaking a rib in the process.

 _GODDAMMIT WHY AM I RETARDED WHY DID I THINK THIS WAS A GOOD FUCKING IDEA_

Jace mentally berated himself while clutching his left side, and took cover behind one of the supporting pylons in the building. After another volley of pistol fire, he used his uninjured arm to toss another plasma bolt. This one he aimed at the floor in front of the gunmen, shaping the blast so that it acted as a mass taser instead of a fireball. That bought him time to dig again and carve a new exit in the adjacent wall.

Ducking outside once more, Jace was immediately blindsided by a shield bash from Fenja.

 _Fucking hell I suck at this_

-

Impulse had shaken off the shock faster than Cricket did, and began throwing a barrage of strikes. Cricket, while unable to match the speed and quantity of Impulse's attacks still nimbly dodged and blocked every punch and kick. _God fucking dammit how is she doing this shit I'm supposed to be the speedster here,_ he lamented. _On the bright side, she's not having any more success than I am._

Artificer had opted not to waste any more pellets on attempting to take down Cricket. He turned his attention instead to the trio of E88 thugs who were now hurriedly exiting the building. They seemed to prioritize putting as much distance between them and the building as possible.

Artificer waited until they had crossed the street, then tagged each of them with a sedative pellet. _Just in case; should erase the last six hours for each of them._ The fleeing gangsters had covered about a dozen more yards before collapsing mid-stride. Artificer let out a short sigh of relief before turning his attention back on Cricket.

At that moment, Antares came bolting around the corner. Artificer gave a short chuckle

"Well, whatever you did was obviously-"

"VACATE THE AREA; 12 SECONDS LEFT," shouted Antares, cutting Artificer off. _Well shit, time to…_

"Where's Jace?"

-

Jace rolled to his feet in time to dodge another swipe from Menja. Fenja had moved to flank Jace, cutting off his escape. She reached out to grapple him, so Menja could land a killing blow.

Jace concentrated a let off a small nova pulse. It didn't hurt either of his opponents really, but it bought him precious seconds. He drew on his reserves once more, and jumped, directing the plasma burst into the ground. The superheated air hurt a bit, but it successfully propelled him to the roof of the building.

Attempting the maneuver for the first time, he flailed wildly, and landed on his back. Annoyed, Fenja drew upon her power and _grew_ , at a pace slightly too slow to catch her quarry mid-trajectory.

Jace flailed wildly trying to orient himself before he landed on the roof. He managed to not have the wind knocked out of him on impact, and quickly scrambled to his feet just out of Fenja's reach. He full on sprinted to the far corner of the roof and went for gold on the impromptu long jump off of the building.

The makeshift boiler erupted half a second later, and roughly half the warehouse was destroyed instantly.

-

 _Goddammit this is really starting to piss me off,_ thought Impulse as his duel with Cricket waned on. He decided to switch tactics again, and attempt a grapple one more time.

The sound of the boiler exploding was considerably louder than any of the muted thunderclaps that Jace produced. It caught Cricket off guard as Impulse attempted a variant of a bear hug, and he succeeded.

The sound _also_ caught him off guard, and he felt his heart skip a beat. And then, he felt his heart begin to actually slow down.

Artificer blinked a few times as Jace left from the building and the fireball erupted at the back of the warehouse. Jace managed to control his falling speed with short bursts of plasma, and rolled to a stop with no new injuries.

He turned back to Impulse and Cricket. Impulse normally had a blue glow about him when he was using his mover power. The aura he was currently sporting was blood red. Cricket struggled in his grip, completely unable to make him budge even the tiniest bit, and unable to wiggle out of the lock.

She proceeded to wail on him with her kamas, which proved to be an equally fruitless endeavor. Artificer took the opportunity to peg her several times with the sedatives, just to be safe, as Impulse's red aura began to fade and he began moving again.

Impulse barely registered Cricket's abrupt transition from 'battle rage' to 'unconscious' as he let her fall to the ground. The building was solidly wrecked, and the remains were ablaze, so he booked it back to where the van was parked, and started the engine.

-

Back inside Petyr's apartment, Gabriel took off his mask, still clutching his rib as Petyr set the bone.

"That could have gone better, but it could have gone worse," he remarked. John gave a shrug before pulling out his phone and alerting Coil.

 _Job complete._


	3. Chapter 3

John idly played with his phone for several seconds, waiting for the reply. His phone rang.

"Boss man," John greeted, putting it on speaker.

"My sources have verified that the structure was suitably razed. As promised, your payment is being wired as we speak. I have set up an account for each of you that is handled by a parahuman accountant by the name of Number Man. You should be receiving your respective account information momentarily."

As if on cue, the notification blinked at the top of the phone. Coil continued.

"I hope this is the start of a mutually beneficial relationship." The call ended.

After double checking the details of the new account balance, John sat down and replayed the earlier fight in his mind.

 _I just straight up lost like 5 seconds. That's never happened. Never. Well at least not to me. Never happened to me. The fuck? Oh god is this how Alzheimer's starts? Next I'm going to be forgetting what a toilet is for?_

John thought for a few more seconds, then smacked himself for being stupid.

"Petyr, question for ya."

Petyr had just been synthesizing a purple liquid which smelled curiously like tuna. Supposedly it would accelerate the rate at which bones healed, so Gabriel's rib fracture would be a non-issue in 12 hours rather than 24 days. _But still, why'd it have to smell like fucking tuna? I don't need the sushi cravings at 1:42 am._

"What would be the problem?" Petyr answered.

"What the hell happened to Cricket?" John inquired.

Petyr blinked. "What the hell do you mean 'what happened to her'? You were there. Whatever Leo did caused a giant fireball, Cricket got distracted, then you caught her in a bear hug, and did, _something_. Not quite sure. But regardless, she couldn't move, and I shot her a few times with the sedatives. Out like lightbulb."

John frowned. "That's the problem. I don't remember you shooting her. I lost about 5 or 6 seconds. Anything else that was weird happen?"

Petyr's face contorted in contemplation for a second. "Well now that you mention it, you know how you normally leave a short blue trail behind you?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, you kind of glowed red this time. Actually now that I think about it, she smacked you in the head with her kamas a few times, but it didn't look like it did anything, and you didn't have any cuts or bumps or anything like that on your head."

John laughed a bit. "Welp. Glad to know I guess? No idea how that happened but it did." He gave a half hearted attempt to try and reproduce the effect, with no success.

"Ah well. Guess I'll figure it out in the morning. Maybe."

-

"Morty, you fucking clown, how many goddamn times do I have to go over the color chart with you? Red-Green-Blue-Yellow is 25 _kilo-_ ohms not _mega-_ you dumbass."

Ren shook out her hand to try and recover from the burn she received when the circuit blew. She turned around to head towards the freezer to grab some ice, shooting a glare at Morty on the way. Morty withered under her admonishing gaze. Despite being a full 8 inches taller than her, he always managed to feel absolutely tiny in her presence.

"Sorry Andrews," he muttered. "I'll be off by a wider margin next time."

Ren flexed her hand, and rolled her eyes in annoyance. She was fairly certain her eye muscles in particular got more of a workout than most other people's did. _Note to self_ , _edit visor tracking routine to count number of times I roll my eyes,_ she thought in the back of her mind. "Well stop standing around there like a deer in headlights and go grab the soldering iron over there," she snapped.

Morty dutifully retrieved said instrument, before less-than-dutifully moonwalking it back to where Ren was sitting. She absently reached out to grab it, before it and Morty both disappeared from sight. "God fucking dammit Morty! Just give me the thing!" she shouted, swiping randomly in the vicinity of where Morty's laughter was coming from. "This shit isn't funny!"

"Then why am I laughing so hard?" came the reply between giggles as Morty dropped his field once he was on the other side of the table. Ren gave him one more scowl after snatching the tool. _This asshat….this fucking asshat,_ she thought to herself as she began repairing the circuit board.

After a few hours she sat back, satisfied for the moment with the repair job. The RV that they'd been using for the past few months was reasonably spacious, but that space was immediately sacrificed to the myriad pieces of scrap Ren had insisted on lugging around; after all, one never quite knew when a part could be useful. Morty learned to stop questioning it when Ren managed to get the AC unit going again with the aid of a few broken fluorescent lights, a pocketwatch, and a hiking boot.

"Hungry yet? Pizza?" Morty asked.

"...Sure..." she said, donning her visor. _After that flashy tex-mex place that Morty insisted on, I'm not taking any chances. I never want to spend that much time on a toilet again._ She turned on the visor, and selected the function marked 'combinatorial brute forcer'. The visor registered her eye movements as she phrased her question.

Precisely 27 minutes later, (with a little help from Morty's slightly-extremely-reckless driving) they arrived at a hole-in-the-wall place simply titled "Sid's Pizza" on the outskirts of Albany, NY. The area had certainly seen better days. _Only way you could make it more obvious that this is the shitty part of town is with a neon sign,_ thought Ren, as they passed through several side streets riddled with abandoned houses with rotting frames. Though the destruction caused by Nilbog had been contained to Ellisburg, the secondary effects had been felt in a much wider radius as property values all over upstate NY fell in the following years.

Morty however was concerned only with the grumbling of his stomach and the means of making it cease. He was about to hop out of the RV when Ren stopped him.

"Mask up," she said, as she adjusted the opacity filter on her visor, going from translucent to near-black.

"Wait, whoa, I thought we were getting some food?" Morty asked, even as he donned his mask; a cheap plastic thing he'd picked out of a bargain bin. It was a simple grey mask that covered his eyes, nose and cheeks, in a style somewhat reminiscent of the guy from 'Phantom of the Opera.'

"We are, Cloak," she replied. "We're just not the ones paying for it." She pointed over to a group of motorcycles that were painted a sickly deep green. "Those, if I'm not wrong, belong to some upstart half-a-bit biker gang which, if I'm also not mistaken, are currently being fucknuggets."

Cloak nodded, having been through this song and dance before. "Okie-dokie, Dagger. Should I veil us both or what?"

"' _Should I give us an immensely useful element of surprise or nah?'_ Like, how is this even a question?" Dagger chastised. She readied a scrapped-together taser while Cloak worked his power. Once it was up, they entered the establishment through the front door.

On any other day, Sid would have been creeped the hell out by his front door opening of it's own volition. Most people would; inanimate objects were called _inanimate_ for a reason after all. Today however, his attention was much more focused on the four men in front of him making a rather aggressive sales pitch for paying a protection fee. Three of them had come armed with nailboards, and the fourth was nonchalantly brandishing a _goddamn uzi_. On top of that, both of his cooks had just stepped outback for a cigarette prior to the arrival of this particular group of miscreants, so he was alone and unable to reach the sawed-off 12 gauge behind the freezer. It had proven to be lifesaving exactly three times prior, but everybody's luck seems to run out eventually.

"...so for an establishment such as this, the market price for 'accident prevention' would be around 400 a week? That seems about-"

The man holding the uzi flopped to the ground like a marionette that just had its strings cut. His companions stared at their downed associate before Cloak dropped his veiling effect, sporting a stupidly wide grin as he did so. He appeared directly behind the man currently limp on the floor, in between the three nailboard wielding goons.

"Hey guys! Wanna play catch?" he half-shouted with the goofiest voice he could muster. As the two thugs who flanked him managed to begin their counterattack, Cloak tossed a knife at each of them. On Cloak's left, the knife pierced his opponent's kneecap, causing him to drop his weapon as he fell to the floor writhing in agony. On Cloak's right, that assailant had a knife pierce and nearly sever the connective tissue in his leading shoulder, causing him to drop his weapon on himself. He too collapsed in a heap, unwilling to continue.

The third assailant behind Cloak had completed his wind up for an overhand strike. He failed to notice Dagger standing behind him, and as he began to swing, she jammed her scrapyard-taser into his lower spine. He fell to the ground convulsing violently.

Dagger used up the rest of the battery making sure that each of the upstart bikers were well and truly unconscious. Then, she methodically emptied each of them of everything valuable. All totalled, it came out to $1400 in cash, 3 knifes, the aforementioned uzi, and at least an ounce of low grade meth.

Sid, still recovering from the shock of the whole situation, spoke up. "Y-you guys capes or something? Look, I don't want any trouble..I'm just trying to get by…"

"Well in that case," Dagger interrupted, "we'll have a medium pie, half pepperoni, and…"

"...the other half is olives, pickles and mustard," added Cloak. Dagger shook her head slightly before continuing.

"The _best_ way to make sure nothing else happens is that you don't call the cops until _after_ we leave. Not in the mood to deal with them."  
Sid vigorously nodded his head and screamed at his cooks to finish up and get busy.

Cloak and Dagger left with their pie and climbed back into the RV. Dagger took off her mask and began digging in, while checking her newest contacts. One in particular caught her attention.

 _Hmmm….time to see what the 'Coil' asshole is offering…_

-

 _Chimera. That's the name they keep calling me._

The figure thought for a moment in between bites of the unfortunate fox that was on the forest floor. _At this point, I might as well keep it. Not like I remember what my name was supposed to be in the first place. Or anything else about myself for that matter._ He'd heard the words 'case 53' thrown around several times. Generally followed by some variation on 'living affront to nature.' The figure finished with it's meal, and began to slowly shift into a new form, electing to manifest a wolf's endurance along with a gazelle's stride for some distance running. The result looked like an oversized greyhound with blonde fur and wicked claws.

 _I hate running. Fucking hate it._ He'd much rather fly, truth be told, but flying in broad daylight had a tendency to draw negative attention. Getting literally tackled out of the air near Nashville taught him that much. _Either that, or that guy in particular was_ really _territorial about his airspace._ Even less fun was trying to escape from the Nashville PRT through the sewers; being any kind of vermin was irritating in the first place, let alone being a cross between a rat, a mouse, and a centipede.

He'd tried forcing himself to return to a human form, but he could never quite get there. There was always some other animal trait that manifested; he always ended up something like a satyr, or a centaur, or a werewolf, or with an eagle's head and a lion tail, or something else patently not human. Never quite got there.

Then of course there was the hunger. The fucking hunger. No matter how much he ate, he'd be starving again within the next hour. When the hunger got bad...well...he tended to make questionable decisions. Such as that time he was just outside St. Louis and a group of Hell's Angels opened fire on him when they found him digging through a dumpster.

One could make a case for killing a few of his attackers in self-defense. It was much harder to make a case for eating them after the fact, and 'I was really really hungry' didn't win him any favors with the St. Louis PRT. Another one of many places he left in a hurry.

 _Why the hell do I keep going back?_ he asked himself for the umpteenth time. He could thrive perfectly well outside the boundaries of the civilization that his power had forcibly exiled him from. Yet even 24 hours without the sound of a car, or someone taking out the trash, or some other mundane human activity seemed to drive him mad. _I know I can't go back there, and I_ know _I can't stay away. Fuck everything._

He found himself on southern end of Lake Moultrie, SC, dumpster diving once more for assorted vermin. _It's one hell of an acquired taste, but they really are quite delicious_ , he thought to himself as he began to manifest a vulture's digestive system. While the rats would certainly be quite high in various macronutrients, chances are they would also be quite high in some less than pleasant diseases, and it never hurt to be cautious. In that same spirit he also began to manifest a bear's size and strength, and rounded out the ensemble with a carapace of a hercules beetle scaled to size, before starting on his snack time.

Not five minutes in, Chimera was distracted by the loud barking of a couple of pitbulls that had rounded the corner. They kept their distance while continuing to posture aggressively. _I do not have time for this shit today,_ thought Chimera as he turned to give a threatening growl of his own, which in his current state sounded like the midpoint between a bear's roar and a distinctly avian screech. _If these dogs don't stop pissing me off, I'm going to eat them too,_ he thought as they began to cower away.

"Baxter! Ringo! Where'd you boys r-"

The man's breath caught as he rounded the corner and stared in shock at Chimera's form. Still slack-jawed, his hands began moving mechanically as he drew his hunting revolver and fired.

"OW! THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR?" Chimera shouted, his voice a deep distorted baritone. The large caliber bullet failed to penetrate his beetle shell, but the impact still felt like getting beamed by a 95mph fastball.

Instead of answering, the man simply aimed for center mass again and squeezed off another shot.

"GODDAMMIT STOP THAT" Chimera howled. _Not only does it hurt, that gun is REALLY FUCKING LOUD HOLY SHIT._ Chimera's ears were still ringing as he turned and leapt onto the gunman. He bent down to bite off the hammer of the revolver as the struggling man tried to prime another shot. The man screamed in pain as Chimera also bit off a good chunk of his hand. He hadn't even paid attention to the two dogs trying their best to gnaw at his hind legs.

Chimera leered at the prone man who was grunting both in pain and futile effort to get out from under the 900 pound creature who currently had him pinned. "Its really REALLY rude to interrupt someone while they're eating you know. All I wanted was a snack; some vermin here, some garbage there. No harm, no foul. But ~noooooo~, you had to go and start shooting like an asshole. So…"

... _how's about you become my meal in- nope._ He stopped that particular train of thought. _Nope nope nope, bad Chimera. Eating people is frowned upon, remember that._

While trying to come up with a different way to finish his sentence, he was interrupted again, this time by a kid who looked to be about 10 or 11.

"PA! PA! LET GO OF MY PA YOU MONSTER!" the kid shouted. The kid was brandishing a slightly larger weapon than his old man had; a pump action shotgun. Chimera looked at the kid, then back at the pinned man as he started backing off.

"Clyde! Go get Ma and tell her to get everyone. Tarball, Lynchpin, Stonewall, everyone!"

Chimera took that as his cue to leave in earnest. He shook off the two dogs stubbornly hanging onto his legs and began running, swapping out the bear's size for a cheetah's sprinting speed. About a mile down the road, he found a storm drain, and swapped forms again, opting for an amalgamation of an alligator and electric eel. He followed the drain into the Cooper river, and followed it out into the Atlantic ocean. He swapped forms once more, morphing into a cross between an orca, a tuna, and a great white shark, and swam out a good couple hundred miles or so before turning north.

After what felt like two and a half eternities, Chimera judged the temperature difference to be cold enough to start heading back towards land. _I don't know how aquatic life does it; between the tankers and the whales and the occasional volcanic activity burp, the ocean is really REALLY loud goddamn always. Fuck that noise._ He made his way towards what looked like a bunch of boats piled on top of each other haphazardly on the ocean floor, manifesting physiques of smaller fish on the way so as to not draw undue attention.

Once he was close enough, he swam right up to the moonlit shore and transformed again into a cross between a german shepard and a porcupine. The surrounding area looked suitably deserted at that time of night, so he began to settle down for a nap. Hopefully from a distance, the porcupine spines would look close enough to dog fur (albeit in really shitty condition) that no one would think it was anything out of the ordinary. Right before settling in, he manifested a final change; a skunk's defense mechanism. He really wasn't in the mood for putting up with anyone's shit.

Chimera began to wake up and felt uncharacteristically groggy. He blinked a few times, and became steadily more alarmed as his vision failed to return to normal sharpness. When he started to look around properly, full on panic mode set in; he was decidedly _not_ on the shore near the boat wreckages. Instead, he now was secured to a cool metal table by several bands of some black metallic alloy -or at least it _felt_ like a metallic alloy- in a room which appeared to have no doorway. His bonds were tight, but not painfully so. The walls, floor, and ceiling appeared to be stainless steel with no discernable vents anywhere, with three rows of halogen lamps providing light. It was certainly brighter than he would have cared for at that moment, but nothing he couldn't deal with.

Chimera had started to try and move his limbs, and discovered (much to his chagrin) that his muscular control was similarly compromised; his entire being felt like it had fallen asleep, much the way one's foot would if one sat on it the wrong way for an extended period of time. He began trying to swap out the canine profile for something thinner and more flexible. _Let's go with...boa constrictor,_ he thought. His mental panic meter jumped when he realized that the metal bonds were shrinking and morphing to adjust to his new form, and kept him just as immobile as before.

"Fine, you fucking got me," he hissed in defeat to the empty room, not really expecting an answer.

A section of the wall in front of him slid upwards, and in walked a man in a completely black body suit with a white snake pattern that wound around one leg, up through the torso and around the neck before ending at his forehead. The man walked with an unhurried measured cadence towards him, and stopped roughly a yard in front of him, adopting what looked like a parade rest stance.

"I see you now have a grasp of the obvious," he remarked with an even tone that betrayed no emotion or intent.

"Who are you?"

"A fair question. My name is Coil." He let silence hang for a few moments.

"Why?" A half-hearted squirm supplied the missing context.

"You've caught the attention of several parties, Chimera," he answered.

"St. Louis?"

Coil allowed himself a small chuckle. "That is one of several instances."

"So, what are you going to do? Hand me over for a bounty? Dissect me?" the serpentine figure spat.

"No need to be quite so melodramatic just yet. If that were my intention, do you really think we'd be having this conversation?" He paused for a few moments. "While it is true that some of the less level-headed PRT branches would indeed like to see you shipped off to the Birdcage, I am not quite so short-sighted. Your abilities certainly show promise; that you've evaded capture as long as you have is a testament to that. But first I must confirm a suspicion of mine."

Chimera let out a small hiss, but otherwise nodded.

"Now then," Coil continued, "you clearly possess the tools to thrive in the wilderness, unfettered and unimpeded by society. Yet, you had elected time and again to try and return to it. Sure, you've stuck to the outskirts of civilization, but you voluntarily wandered within the proximity of society nonetheless. Why?"

"I asked myself the same question," Chimera started. "Honestly? Its really goddamn lonely out there in the wild. I hate it. I _really_ hate it. Doesn't make a lot of sense when I think about it, but then again, neither does being able to turn into a cross between a snake, a porcupine, and a skunk." Had he shoulders to shrug at that moment, he would've.

"Well now that you've confirmed my suspicion, I'll make you my offer of employment. I am in the process of constructing a team of parahumans, and you would make a useful addition to their ranks, should you accept."

"But would they accept me?" Chimera blurted more quickly than he would have liked.

"Your past transgressions are far less public than you'd imagine, and suffice it to say when working with capes, a certain level and flavor of open-mindedness is demanded."

 _A team of other people. I'd be among people again,_ Chimera thought to himself. It gave him a small sense of satisfaction that he couldn't quite put into words.

"I'm in."


	4. Chapter 4

13, April 4:52 PM  
 **Welcome to the Parahumans Online Message Boards**  
You are currently logged in, SixThousandLumens  
You are viewing: Threads you have replied to AND Threads that have new replies OR private message conversations with new replies Thread OP is displayed Ten posts per page Last ten messages in private message history Threads and private messages are ordered by user custom preference. You have 67 infractions and 22 warnings. ■ **Topic: Lung In Custody  
In: Boards ► North America ► Brockton Bay ► News  
Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy in the Know)  
Posted on April 13, 2011:  
I've just received confirmation that our very own Armsmaster has indeed managed to subdue Lung. Link [here] for details.  
 **(Showing Page 10 of 37)**

 **► DrainBread**  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
HOLY SHIT HE ACTUALLY DID IT

 **► Sliver_King**  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
Awesome! Hopefully this is the start of the heroes making a comeback.

 **► BluntedPike**  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
Sliver_King that is literally the single most naive statement I have ever heard out of anyone, anywhere, ever.

Ever.

 **► XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
Bout time the white hats did something useful for once

 **► 8Northman8** (Temp-banned)  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
 **USER HAS BEEN TEMP-BANNED FOR THIS POST:** is it really so hard to be civil? - Tin_Mother

 **► LawnchairPoster**  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
How the hell did Armsy manage it anyway?

BluntedPike no reason to be a cock about it either

 **► Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know)  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
Apparently some kind of super potent tranquilizer that might as well have just been straight up poison at that point. Apparently they had to have Lung on life support for a bit to combat loads of necrotizing tissue

 **► HalfLife3When**  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
Bagrat sauce?

 **► Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know)  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
Right [here]

 **► Leap_Second**  
Replied on April 13, 2011:  
hooooooooooooooo boy that sounds straight up mean. I mean Lung is a bastard of monstrous proportions (pun intended) but still

 **End of Page.** **1, 2, 3 ...8, 9,** **10** **, 11, 12 ... 35, 36, 37**

"I...can't...believe that...Lung...is fucking...dead...POST."

Within seconds after Leo posted it, he'd been slapped with an infraction, stating that it was in extremely poor taste to make demonstrably false claims. _Well excuse me for having a sense of humor_ , he thought to himself with an incongruous sense of indignation.

"Hey guys! Apparently Armsmaster finally found a way to take Lung down."

John had done a bit of a double-take at that. "Lung. _The_ Lung. The big angry dragon that is the SOLE reason that the Azn Bad Boyz have any territory at all and haven't been curbstomped into the ground by the Empire. We're talking about the same guy?"

"Yes…" replied Leo, slightly confused at John's incredulity. "And wait, doesn't the ABB have that other guy, Oni Lee? Teleporting suicide bomber?"

"First, Oni Lee is nothing on his own and everyone knows it. Secondly, that still doesn't make any fucking sense. Lung's been practically untouchable for a while now; he's won pretty much every single fight he's been in, and those times that he didn't win he still forced a bloody stalemate. He's won 1v4 against the hero capes at least half a dozen times that I can remember, and definitely 1v6 vs the Empire at least twice. Who took him down again?"

"Armsmaster, I already told you this."

"No you fucking moron; I mean who else was with him?" John snapped.

"Oh….lemme see here…" Leo skimmed the original article once more. "Says here he did it solo."

"I smell the mountain of horseshit filtering through your screen from here. Hell fucking no he did that on his own. I'd sooner believe that Cricket had a black girlfriend."

Petyr had just unlocked the door at that moment, decidedly feeling like he'd just walked in on the strangest conversation. "Do I want to know how you got onto the topic of interracial lesbians?" he asked, while lugging in several bags of groceries.

"Leo is a gullible motherfucker who read somewhere online that Armsmaster took _Lung_ into custody _solo_ , and I merely expressed my disbelief in such a notion," John responded, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

Petyr raised an eyebrow. "Well, whether or not he did it solo is definitely up for debate, but on my way back, the news channel confirmed that Lung was arrested and is now in PRT custody."

John blinked. "HOW? Did they say what they took him down with?"

"Allegedly enough tinker-made tranqs to take down a herd of elephants or some bullshit. Shit that should be lethal, but isn't because, well, he's Lung," Petyr responded, starting to load the smaller fridge with the 17 full rib racks he'd purchased.

"Still, to hit him with the tranqs in the first place would mean that he hadn't started fighting yet because you're not convincing me that any darts are getting through his scales; tinker or not. Which, then, would imply a drastic shift in tactics overnight, and the PRT is not known for that. And furthermore, why now? This sounds like it could've been done years ago without too much trouble. Halbeard's built way more bullshit toys than some tranqs; you can't convince me he _just last week_ figured out how to do it."

"I'm not saying I buy the explanation either, I'm simply telling you what was reported. Which definitely sounds like they're hiding shit," Petyr replied.

"Authorities withholding information," yawned Gabriel as he swung his arm to test how his ribcage was holding up. "In equally unsurprising news, grass is green and water is wet."

"I'm a little more worried about the power vacuum. Nazis might capitalize," stated Leo. He looked back at Petyr who continued to pack the fridge. "Okay seriously, what's with the sudden excessively carnivorous diet?"

"Oh, that? We got new teammates. Boss man vetted them and everything. One of them is a case 53; hence the meat."

Leo frowned. "I still don't follow."

As if on cue, a creature with the head of a wolf, a gorilla-like body, and a scorpion tail walked into the main room, and turned its attention to Leo. "It's mostly my payment. Eating stray animals and/or people is frowned upon; this is the next best thing. Name's Chimera."

Gabriel and Leo kept their reactions to a minimum. John however, began to jump up out of his seat with a yelp of surprise that began to drop several octaves as a red aura manifested itself around him. He was frozen in mid leap, about a foot off the ground.

"Does he normally do that?" Chimera snorted.

Petyr softly chuckled. "Doesn't appear to be a voluntary reaction; hell he just found out about it two nights ago when we got in a fight he thought he might actually lose. He'll come out of it in a bit. Hopefully before the other two show up." After a few more seconds, John's aura began to fade, and he caught himself.

"Happened again, didn't it?" he said, composing himself. "Well then. Nice to meet you. Name's John. Impulse in the field. I guess you've already met Petyr aka Artificer before. The runway reject over there is Leo; cape name Antares. The tall guy over there is Gabriel, and he currently holds the fucking worst cape name in Brockton Bay with 'Jace Beleren.'"

"So, with that out of the way, when are the other guys showing up?" John continued.

"Already here, actually, for...exactly 74 seconds," an unseen woman's voice spoke from the middle of the room. Once everyone had turned their attention to the source of the noise, the air distorted as two people appeared to shimmer into existence.

"Now THAT is certainly one way of making an entrance!" exclaimed Leo, while everyone else blinked in surprise. "At some point in the future would you mind repeating that while I film it? Because the transitioning aesthetic looked marvellous."

"I can already tell we're going to get along," said the taller figure to Leo, while the shorter woman shook her head slightly. "Name's Morty most of the time. Occasionally, instead it's 'dumbass', or 'asshat', or some variation on that theme. She's Ren. On the clock, we're Cloak and Dagger."

-  
10:52 PM

Gabriel's phone began to ring. He didn't need to check the caller ID to know it was Coil. He put it on speaker. "Coil," he greeted.

"Jace. I trust your team is currently present and within earshot?"

"All present and accounted for."

"Good. I have an assignment for you should you choose to accept it. It will commence roughly 13 hours from the present moment. You will be assisting a second mercenary parahuman group headed by Faultline."

"Assisting in what, exactly?" Dagger asked.

"An extraction of sorts. Specifically, I require the safe delivery of Dinah Alcott."

"You mean a kidnapping," Dagger stated flatly.

"To be direct, yes."

Dagger's frown grew a hair more severe, and Cloak shied away from her a fraction.

"In case anyone was unaware, she is the mayor's niece," Coil supplied. "The next election cycle due to begin within a few months. I already control the two most likely challengers, but I should like to hedge my wagers by controlling the incumbent as well."

Impulse cut in next. "Sounds a bit bold dunnit? You have to be talking some serious cash to make it worth the kind of risks we'd be running" he pointed out.

"Faultline's mercenaries are quite capable, and I've already leveraged my influence to mitigate many of the risks that you are concerned with in the first place. As for compensation, I am willing to pay $50,000 upon completion."

Impulse slowly leaned back in his seat. "Don't get cheap on me. Seventy." A few moments passed in silence.

"Will sixty-five suffice?" Coil offered.

Impulse let out a small sigh after a moment. "It'll do."

"Good. Does anyone have any objections?"

"Plenty." Jace managed to inject a surprising amount of venom into that single word without raising his voice or lowering his pitch. His eyes were glowing a bright purple, and he failed to prevent the occasional ember from flaring up on his forearms. "I'm not aiding a kidnapping. Not fucking happening. You want to hit the ABB, the E88, or the Merchants? I'll gladly do that every day of the fucking week and twice on Tuesdays. Hell, I'll fucking hit the Protectorate without hesitation if you show me a big enough skeleton or two in their closet. Kidnapping? Fuck no, and especially not a goddamn kid. I'm sitting this one out."

"Wow. Way to fuck up the floor with all the blood leaking out of your heart there," Impulse drawled. "Anyone else sitting it out?"

"Punching fun dudes is kidnapping kidnapping. Kidnapping dudes who could presumably pedo. Yeah, I'm not entirely on board with pedo. Punching dudes who could presumably on board with this eith this fun; kids is fun; kids is eith this really pedo. Yeah, I'm not entirely pedo. Yeah, I'm not entirely," Cloak stammered, seeming to spontaneously lose control over his speech.

Dagger visibly winced, shrinking in on herself slightly. "Yeah...what he said," she sighed. Artificer was the last to opt out of the job.

"Very well then," came Coil's voice. "I shall send instructions to Impulse, Chimera, and Antares. Good night."

-  
11:35 PM

"Don't do anything stupid."

That was the last thing that Petyr had said before Gabriel left the house. Given that Gabriel had taken one of his spare masks with him, hidden under his jacket, Petyr's concerns were not unfounded.

Gabriel felt absolutely sick to his stomach. He knew that this mercenary gig was going to piss him off eventually; he just didn't expect it to happen this quickly.

 _This is exactly the kind of fucking shit I wanted to prevent; to be able to pick fights_ _ **against**_ _the drug and weapon and human traffickers, the protection racketeers, the uniformed lynch mobs. Because apparently the powers that be seem completely incapable of handling it their way. Why the fuck did I let that bitch convince me I was going to really be able to do any of that working for Coil? Why am I this fucking stupid?_

As he continued ruminating on nature of his 'employment', he felt a tug on the reserve of power he'd drawn upon back at the now-razed warehouse. He felt it shrink by a small fraction, but a perceptible reduction nonetheless. To compare the sensation to the sudden acute nausea after a well placed punch to the liver would be an understatement. It felt more like a part of his very being had been drained.

More troubling was the fact that he felt a second auxiliary power source flaring up. This one felt far more volatile, more primal, more _brutal_ ; after all, it was the reason he'd left the base in the first place.

He hopped on a bus going towards the boardwalk, hoping that a pint or seven might calm him down some. He'd initially headed towards the back of the bus for his seat, but reconsidered upon spotting two teenagers with E88 tattoos. They audibly sneered at him as he stopped a few rows short. _They think I'm scared of them,_ he mused. _They're half right. I'm scared. Scared of how much_ _ **fun I'll have vaporizing their flesh, reducing them and the pavement they stand on-**_

Gabriel forced his hands to unclench, and tried to calm down. _Chill. Chill the fuck out you lunatic,_ he mentally repeated, trying to fight the sensation of pressure building up everywhere underneath his skin. _Distractions, distractions, MUSIC._ He began to drum his fingers on his knee in various patterns. _1-e-and-a, e-and-a-3-e-and-a, e-and-a-1-e, a-2 and 3 and-a-4-e-and-a….._

Gabriel got off at his stop, double checking that the new hires didn't decide to follow him. _I almost hope they do,_ _ **then I -,**_ _NO no no no, stop that Gabe. You fucking stop that right fucking now you belligerent piece of shit._ He took one last look over his shoulder as he rounded the upcoming corner, and grimaced. The two goons had decided to follow him after all.

He purposefully overshot his destination, continuing to walk towards the more decrepit streets. _I'm really gonna regret this, but I'm in a vindictive mood right now, so fuck it. They want a target, I'll paint myself like one._ He listened for the acceleration of their footsteps, trying to gauge exactly how much space he had to work with. He stopped next to an alleyway and spun around to face the two, using every ounce of self restraint to prevent any stray embers or sparks from appearing.

"In case both of your mothers failed to teach you any manners, stalking people is widely considered to be extremely rude."  
"Yeah, fuck you too wiseass," replied the smaller of the two, who was about a half foot shorter than his buddy. He looked to be around 16, and clearly posturing to try and impress his friend.

"If you want something, make it quick; I got places to be," Gabriel spoke, in as level a tone as he could manage. _Last chance,_ he thought to himself, concentrating a very faint aura of plasma around his hands.  
The larger goon stepped forward. He was still shorter than Gabriel, but not by much. "Well, the Empire puts in a lot of work trying to keep these streets clean of the degenerates. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it. That takes capital, and this interaction right here, well let's call it 'fundraising,'" he stated.

"Right. I forgot you guys were trying to secure the monopoly on being degenerate shitstains. Now is the part where you kindly fuck off. You're both fucking cowards anyway, so-"

Gabriel stopped talking just in time to bring up his arm up to block the incoming knife slash. His jacket took the brunt of the blow, but it still left a nice cut along his forearm. He reached out with the other arm to grab his assailant's wrist, and forced some current through the arm. With the attacker's arm temporarily disabled, Gabriel stepped back, grabbing and torquing the man's wrist until he was off balance, and his arm hyperextended.

"Like I said," Gabriel spoke as he reared his other arm back. "Fucking," -he drove a punch right at the vulnerable elbow joint, eliciting a yelp of pain- "-cowards-" he delivered a second, and felt the bones shatter underneath. He released his grip on the wrist.

The knife dropped from the larger goon's hand as his arm went completely limp, as Gabriel reached for the man's throat. He caught it, and squeezed, supplying a bit of current to interfere with anything else his opponent might try. _**I'm going to enjoy cooking your spine you mis-**_ _NOPE not doing that. Calm down you fuck._ Gabriel took a slow deliberate breath.

"What the fuck are you so scared of that you joined a gang? Think about how much of a pussy you have to be to continually-" Gabriel looked over to where the smaller kid was standing. "-well look at that, your buddy bounced. Tell you what. I'm feeling nice tonight. I'm going to let you go, and you're going to leave. Quickly. Try anything or make any noise, and I'm going to regret letting you go. You do not want me to do that."

He released his grip. The man took several shallow breaths, before scrambling away as best he could.

Gabriel looked down at the bleeding cut, and let a small wave of plasma run down his arm to cauterize the wound. Satisfied, Gabriel walked back to the bar that was his original destination.

-  
1:22 am

"...and the fucking ABB dudes were harassing my dad's shop all the fucking time. Always wanting more and more money until one day he and I made the mistake of fighting back..." The man next to Gabriel trailed off a bit. He was an asian man with short black hair, who looked to be in his mid 20s. He stood a hair under 6 feet tall, and was powerfully built, if a bit on the heavy side.  
"The pricks turned out to be tougher than they looked?" Gabriel supplied.

"Naw, the fuckers are all bark and no bite. Well, at least most of them. When they're not armed. At least that particular group -hic- went down like a sack of potatoes. No, the shit hit the fan like two days afterwards when _Oni-motherfucking-Lee_ himself fucking showed up. Prick teleported behind my dad and hamstrung him, then teleported out of the shop completely before I knew what had happened. Dad's in the hospital now." He took another swig of his beer. "That was three weeks ago. Although since Lung got taken in, maybe the heroes are starting to -hic- get their act together. Take that prick down too. Really shouldn't be all that tough."

"One can always hope." Gabriel finished the rest of his drink and ordered another round.

"Name's Alan Cheung, by the way. Did I tell you that already? I feel like I did."

"Only 3 times," Gabriel said with a chuckle. "But it's all good; you're on pint number 5 anyway."

"Shit, how many does that mean you've had?"

"Fucked if I know. I'll figure it out in the morning from how much money I don't -hic- have."

"S'pose that's one way to do it." Alan flagged the bartender down for another drink. "OI, another pint of this Czech shit."

"Told you it's good. You got any suggestions?"

"Matter of fact -hic- I do, but I've no idea where it's sold, if it even is sold around here. Called baijiu, basically super hard sake; like 110 proof. You drink it at weddings and shit."

"Or if you're looking to get real fucked real quick. Fucking 110. That's like that 'navy strength' rum you see sometimes that's -hic- like 57 abv."

"That sounds like a f -hic- fucking stupid name. Who came up with that?"

"I think its called that because at that point you could spill it all over the gunpowder on ships and shit, and it would still fire the cannonballs properly. Don't take my -hic- word for it though."

The conversation continued to meander aimlessly through topic after topic, ranging from the ubiquity of alcohol in every civilization, to the strengths and weaknesses of the English language itself; from the unique intensity of the tornadoes in the midwest United States which isn't found anywhere else in the world, to the mathematicians who literally drove themselves insane by thinking about infinity too hard, and a dozen other subjects in between.

As the bartender announced closing time and the two men stumbled outside towards the bus stop, the topic returned to capes.

"I feel like, picking a name would be fucking hard y'know," Gabriel said. He couldn't quite keep the slurring out of his voice. "You'd want shomething...not stupid. It'd be like..p -hic- picking a shcreen name, except in real life, and you can't go change it if you picked sssomething dumb. At least not eashily."

"Ya got a point there. You alsho don't want shomeone to pick one for -hic- you, or y'might get stuck like that poor bas-..bastard Chubster."

Gabriel chuckled. "Serioushly that was fuckin mean of...whoever the fuck did that."

"Y'also want it to make shense without being too obvious...probably at least." Alan paused. "Saaay, hypothetically, you could, iunno, take lotsa hits. And heal yours'lf real good. Like... _lotsa_ hits. And you wanna be like a...protector-person. Whaddya call yourself?"

Gabriel thought for a moment. "Well, 'Aegis' is taken by that one kid, and I rem'ber shomething about a 'Bulwark' existing…'Shield' sounds stupid….'Guardian'? Something -hic- simple?"

"'Guardian'...I like it...hypothetically o'course. 'Guardian'...yeh that works dunnit?"

"Well, if we're still talking hypoth- -hic-, hypotecal? Fuckin make-believe...whaddya call some asshole who throwsh plasma n shit?"

"Like, blood? Or d'y'mean like fire n stuff?"

"The -hic- second one."

"Huh….well you could...no that one'sh dumb. Maybe...iunno…'Gigawatt' r sumthin? Or...wait…'Corona'?"

"If I was a chick, maybe. Its also a shitty beer anyways."

"Well...huh...maybe 'Crown'? Ish what it transhlates to in -hic- English anyway."

"Huh….'Crown'...I like it," Gabriel mused.

"I really like it." 


	5. Chapter 5

Grrrrrnnnnnngh"

Gabriel blearily opened his eyes and blinked several times. The light from the late morning sun felt like it might as well have been a halogen lamp placed 5 feet in front of him. He shut his eyes tightly for a few more seconds before attempting to sit up. He'd been sprawled out along a park bench, with his left arm and leg hanging off the side.

He tried to sit up, and his limbs weren't exactly cooperating. Furthermore, his left hand felt heavier, and he realized he'd been holding something. Upon inspection, he was holding a now empty 750ml bottle of cheap whiskey. _Good fucking god, I'm a degenerate,_ he thought to himself. Once he maneuvered himself into a sitting position, he began patting down his pockets, making sure he didn't lose anything. _Phone, check, keys, check, wallet, check, ID intact, check, mask, check...ok. Phone messages…_

There was one from Petyr, simply stating that he'd need to be sober by Friday night. Apparently Coil wanted to hit the ABB soon. _Alright, I can live with that. Now, where the hell am I?_ He went to stand up and nearly fell over immediately, before placing a hand on the bench to steady himself. _Beautiful. I'm STILL drunk. And likely will be for a while longer. Time to down a quart of coffee or something._

He carefully made his way out of the tiny park and towards one of the restaurants across the street. Once inside, he took out his phone and did a quick check on his location. _Brockton Bay Financial District, eh? At least I wound up in the same city. People have pulled this kinda shit before and woken up in way worse situations._ He sat down near the window looking out towards the central bank building.

"Hello there. Would you like something to drink to start off?"

Gabriel jumped a little, already starting to fall back asleep due to the copious amounts of alcohol still in his system.

"Coffee. Lots of coffee. And…" he paused looking over the laminated menu once more. "The bacon and egg platter, with a side of hash browns."

She nodded. "If I may make a suggestion?"

"Hmm?"

"Swap out the hash browns for some sausages. Always helps me after a rough night anyway. And judging by that gash on your arm, your's was kinda terrible."

Gabriel chuckled. "I guess you could say that. And I think I'll take your suggestion."

Antares put the finishing touches on his outfit. This time he opted for a pair of black bell bottom pants with a ruffled long sleeve shirt that was a deep green color with various leaf motifs along the sleeves. He'd dyed his hair a particularly bright shade of lime green, letting it trail behind him in a short ponytail, and he'd applied makeup to make his features look practically elven. He'd even rounded out the deal with pointed ear tips.

"Any particular reason you're dressing up like Legolas's metrosexual brother?" Impulse asked.

"Well think about it. We're about to kidnap a child, which is something the fair folk of celtic lore did. So why not look the part?"

Impulse just stood there for a second staring at Antares, head slightly cocked to one side. "Do you listen to half the shit that comes out of your mouth?" he asked. _ALSO, WHY DO YOU STILL HAVE THAT FUCKING BANDOLIER WITH SHAVING CREAM?_

"Of course I do. Everything I say is calculated," Antares calmly. "And to preemptively answer your next question, no, I will not disclose my decision making process. It is mine and mine alone and you can't have it."

Impulse rolled his eyes, before turning his attention towards Chimera. "You finished up eating yet?"

"Gimme like..3 more minutes," he said, mouth still full with a half-eaten rack of ribs.

"Well take it with you then. We gotta go now if we want to beat some of the traffic; better to be safe than sorry. I'd run there myself, and this wouldn't be a problem, but neither of you can keep up with me."

Chimera made a slight groan of annoyance, but began to shift into a smaller form that would have an easier time fitting into a van.

Coil's instructions stated that Faultline and her associates would be waiting in a pair of electrical repair vans parked in the first rest stop outside the western edge of the city limits. According to Coil's information, they would be parked between two semi-trailers on the eastern end of the lot; secluded enough for a quick meeting. They arrived about 4 minutes ahead of schedule, and pulled up in the empty spot between the two repair vans. Antares took out his phone and called the number he'd been provided.

"Eighteen jackalope dubai martyr," Antares spoke.

"Smithtown jungle twenty-two acorn," came the response. The man answering the phone had a hint of an accent that Antares couldn't quite place, but if he guessed it sounded like some type of Eastern European.

"Polaris forty-five quark Sinclair," Antares supplied, completing the passphrase.

"Very well then. Please exit your vehicle and enter the one on your right side. The back door is unlocked."

One by one they piled into the the electrical van, which thankfully had been stripped of most of the original equipment, allowing the six occupants a bit of breathing room. Chimera had opted for a cross between a fox, an otter, and a cat so as to take up a relatively small amount of room.

The woman wearing what looked like a modernized version of a samurai's armor spoke first. "Let's get the introductions out of the way quickly. I'm Faultline, and the other two are Newter, and Gregor the Snail." Newter looked to be in his late teens, with a relatively lean build. His skin was a bright orange, which had a faintly visible sheen of multicolored sweat, and bright blue hair. He also had a long prehensile tail behind him which he absently swished about. Gregor on the other hand looked to be a bit older, closer to 30, and was of a fairly rotund build. His skin was translucent, and his skeleton was just barely visible, and several conch shell-like growths dotted his body.

After Antares introduced each member present, Faultline laid out the information she had on hand. "The kid is currently sick at home complaining of headaches. Her mother is there with her, along with a hired protection detail. Between 8 and 12 plainclothes armed guards. We don't move until exactly 12:06:30. Antares, you can do something about the nearby powerlines can't you?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. Make it look as...I guess 'non-intentional' is as good a descriptor as any...as you can. Chimera, how small can you make yourself?"

"If need be, roughly the size of a mouse."

"Good. Do that, find out where inside the house she is, and report back. Impulse, once we know where the girl is, you grab her and bring her back to the van."

"Can do." _Did you_ have _to say it that way though? That sounded really rape-y,_ he thought but didn't say.

"We'll handle any vehicles or personnel capable of pursuit. The girl's mother is not to be touched whatsoever, and there are to be ZERO lethal takedowns. Is that understood, Chimera?"

Chimera shot her a look of annoyance. "That was only that one time…." he muttered under his breath.

"Alright. Get in the other van, and follow us. Maintain a distance between 20 and 30 feet."

While following Faultline's truck, Impulse was distracted in the passenger's seat by the nicer parts of town that he didn't visit much. Passing the Arcadia High school, Impulse couldn't help but wonder where he'd be right now if his childhood had been just a little bit different. _Well, a lot different. Looking at some of these houses, these people easily had 10-30 times as much money as we did._ Impulse grimaced slightly. _Must be nice when you worry about whether or not you'll have to settle for a porterhouse instead of a filet mignon instead of whether or not you'll be eating tomorrow. Might have even gotten to compete like I wanted to in the first place._ They passed by several of the nicer looking apartment complexes before entering the really rich looking parts of town. _Trimmed gardens, pristine roofs and windows, complete lack of bullet holes_... _what have these people ever had to really deal with in their lives? The gangs don't even bother them all that much. The heroes certainly concentrate their efforts here, that much is fucking obvious._ He let his thoughts stew in jealousy a bit longer before he turned his attention back on the task at hand.

 _And now we're about to rob a young girl of her charmed circumstances._ The thought disturbed him more than he'd anticipated.

He was shaken out of his thoughts as Antares put the car into park a block away from the cul-de-sac the Alcott residence was. The clock read 11:52.

 _Nearly showtime._

Gabriel had forced himself to get through most of the meal. The waitress's suggestion had paid off in large part; Gabriel was convinced he'd be more or less fine after a few more hours and a few more trips to the bathroom. By his count he'd had close to a quart of coffee from the time he woke up till now. _That waitress is getting a healthy tip today for dealing with my shit._ He got up a tad shakily, but otherwise able to pass as a functioning member of society, and turned to leave.

He'd walked a half block and towards the nearest bus stop, when he started to notice that everyone had more or less stopped what they were doing. _Alright what the hell has everyone staring like a deer in-_

What the fuck is that?

He turned around to see the Central Bank's main entrance was now spewing a very large amount some sort of thick perfectly black smoke. It didn't move like the kind that was produced by a fire; the way it flowed looked far too deliberate. Like it was being controlled by something or someone. Gabriel thought he read something similar to this on a PHO thread a few days ago, but his memory was failing him on the details. He reached for his phone, but the sound of police sirens and the sight of several PRT vans converging on the bank was enough to confirm his suspicions. Yes, a bank robbery was underway, and yes, one or more parahumans was involved.

 _Goddammit._ He took a deep breath. _'_ _Don't do anything stupid.' I don't need to be there. They've probably got this without me. They'll be fine._

He turned back around, and began walking away.

 ** _Of course. Weren't Petyr and John talking extensively yesterday about the white hats' absolutely stellar track record over the past decade?_**

He stopped. A surge of pain ran through his body at the thought, and it began to grow slowly. It felt like a deep ache in his nerves and joints, yet at the same time it could almost be called a burning sensation. Gabriel shook his head.

 _I'd be going in absolutely blind. I've no idea who or what I'd be up against._ The pain flared up again, bad enough that he stuck a hand out to the wall to steady himself.

 ** _Which means I'm too much of a fucking coward to attack when attack is necessary. Too scared to fail. What if the heroes and the PRT lose? What if civilians get hurt, especially when I had the option to do_** **something** ** _and chose to do_** **nothing?**

Gabriel took a deep breath, before checking that the mask he brought with him was still there. _I'm going to regret this decision either way._

He took a left off of the main street, walking two blocks before taking another left and starting to circle back towards the bank. He took a second to look around up and down the street for signs of anyone who might spot him. _No one's looking...no one's look-wait for that woman to turn around….and...there we go...and fuck the jacket I can get a new one._ He turned back towards the bank.

Once he was about a block away, two armed PRT officers quickly ran up to him, each holding what looked like grenade launchers.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you what the hell do you think you're doing? This area is not safe for civilians."

Gabriel coated one of his hands in plasma, then quickly dismissed the effect. "My family's got money in that bank," he lied. "So I'm a little pissed off. You gonna let me help or what?"

The two guards looked at each other. One of them levelled his weapon at Gabriel. "Do not move. Drummond, call it in."

The other officer quickly walked out of earshot. After a few tense seconds, the other officer started walking back. "...yeah, he's right here. Looks new. Oi!" Gabriel snapped his attention to the other officer as the first lowered his weapon. "You got a name? What do you do?"

Gabriel hesitated for a half second. "Call me Crown. I chuck plasma."

"Alrighty. Higher-ups said go for it. We're fairly certain the Undersiders are in there, and we know they have hostages. Just let out a couple dozen less than a minute ago. Gallant, Kid Win, Vista, Clockblocker, and Aegis are standing by; we've let them know you're here. Head over there, and wait for them to engage first. We've got all the other exits covered, so if they're coming out, they're coming out through the front door. Be warned, Hellhound doesn't play nice."

Crown nodded and jogged over.

Almost immediately after he got situated, Hellhound and her three dogs emerged in a full on sprint from the opaque smoke billowing out of the bank's front entrance. Each seemed to about 10 feet high at the shoulder and seemed much closer to monsters out of nightmares than dogs. _Reading about how big she makes these fuckers and seeing it in person are very different,_ he decided.

 _...Especially when one of them is headed right at me._


	6. Chapter 6

Hellhound directed one of her monstrosities in the general direction of Vista, Gallant, and Kid Win. Vista responded quickest to the incoming threat, by stretching the the distance between the not-dog and her teammates. Kid win and Gallant both followed up with an initial volley of their tinker weaponry at the dog. Gallant's shot sailed high of the mark, while Kid's blast struck the oncoming beast in the left forelimb.

Kid's mouth turned upwards very slightly at the impact. His satisfaction was instantly replaced by annoyance and a healthy dose of fear as the dog kept charging as if nothing at all happened. He quickly hopped onto his hoverboard and put 30 feet between himself and the ground. As the dog closed the artificial distance, Vista compressed the space to her right, stepping through it along with Gallant just in time for the dog to miss its attempted bite. It dug its claws into the ground to brake and reorient itself for another lunge. As soon as its hind legs left the ground, Vista relaxed her power and allowed the space to expand to its original volume.

Meanwhile the dog that Hellhound had been riding had been charging straight at Aegis. Aegis for his part had taken up a wide fighting stance, both hands held out in front of him as if he intended to somehow _catch_ the multiple thousands of pounds of feral force headed straight for him. A weird facial expression that lay somewhere between 'terrified' and 'giddy with anticipation' adorned his face as his back foot started to bounce a bit in anticipation.

As Hellhound got within a few yards of him, she gave a hard yank and a shout, and the charging beast changed targets, going after Clockblocker.

"Damn," Clockblocker said to himself as he went airborne. Crown noticed the white costume gaining altitude out of the corner of his eye, and chanced a quick glance that way. _Wait...I thought Aegis was the one with flight? The fuck?_ Hellhound dug her heel into the dog's side, and gave another barely discernable command, and the beast _jumped_ , ascending much faster than Clockblocker had anticipated, and caught him in its maw. The dog angled itself such that it slammed the cape now trapped in its mouth into the ground on the way down; the impact leaving a solid crack in the pavement. When Clockblocker continued to fight after that kind of a blow, wailing on the snout of the monster with reckless abandon, Crown put two and two together. _They switched costumes_.

Crown turned his attention back to the slightly more pressing matter of the third monster intent on turning him into a chew toy. Crown took a quick step to the side and loosed a blast at the dog's open mouth. It clamped its jaw shut with a yelp, but retaliated by sweeping its head in a wide arc, catching him and knocking him airborne. The initial blow didn't hurt nearly as much as the landing; he sailed through the air for a solid couple of yards, and ended up landing square on his back before the momentum carried him through another few tumbles. Hellhound gave another order, and that dog began charging back towards its master to help keep Aegis pinned to the ground.

Crown took a second to roll back onto his hands and knees. Despite trying to brace for it, he still had the wind knocked out of him on impact. As he started to get up on one foot, he became aware of an unusually loud buzzing sound that seemed to be coming from everywhere. He picked his head up.

 _Oh fuck that shit right in its asshole with a rusty piece of rebar._

Absolutely blanketing the combatants was what must have been literal tons of insects. Wasps, hornets, yellowjackets, horseflies, and other assorted nasty flying insects had poured out from seemingly everywhere, and began working in concert to bite and sting as many times as they could, while some of the smaller flies simply worked to crawl as hard as they could into any exposed orifices. Ears, nostrils, mouth, eyes; if you could presumably enter the human body through it, the insects were trying their damndest to do so.

Had Clockblocker been wearing his normal costume, he wouldn't be having nearly as much trouble as he currently was. His normal costume had absolutely no exposed skin anywhere, whereas Aegis's costume had left the chin, mouth and nose exposed. As such, he was busy wildly flailing at the relentless swarm enveloping him with little success. For every insect he froze, it seemed two more would land on him. As the insects started making their way behind into his nostrils and even behind his eyes, he played his last card and froze himself.

Gallant and Vista had continued to dodge the monstrous dog currently harassing them through repeated stretching and compression of space, and Gallant had managed to land enough calming shots on the beast to slow it down considerably. Kid had opted to gain even more altitude to try and escape the biblical plague; unfortunately this made any shots that he was about to take that much harder to make.

Crown stood up amidst the myriad stinging insects. _Fuck this nonsense_. He concentrated and let off a sharp radial burst to eliminate all the insects within a few feet of him, before focusing on maintaining a small aura of plasma to dissuade any other insects from harassing him further. He turned to look over to where Hellhound was keeping Aegis pinned. Despite the sheer size disparity between them, Aegis had managed to gain just a bit of ground against the dogs holding him down; he'd managed to maneuver both feet onto the ground, as well as worm most of his torso out of the dog's mouth.

Hellhound turned to give a new order to the beast that had been chasing Vista and Gallant through constantly warping space. Crown took that opportunity. He dropped one hand down to his side, and forced. ** _This bitch needs to sit the fuck down_** , he thought to himself as he felt for the reserve pool within his power. Feeling out the connection once again, he drew on it as hard as he could started amassing a ball of plasma, focusing on building charge rather than heat. _I want to be thorough_ , he thought, dissatisfied with the size of the projectile. He felt through his power for the reservoir he'd dipped into before, and drew upon it as much as it would allow. _I wanna make sure she_ _ **sits the fuck down after all**_.

He reared his hand back as if getting ready to throw a baseball, and took a quick hop towards Hellhound. I've no idea if this actually does any more damage, but it feels like it might, he thought as he lined up the throw.

When the bolt left his hand, it was roughly the size of a basketball, crackling loudly as it sailed towards its target. It travelled quickly; far more quickly than most others that he'd thrown prior, crackling loudly along it's course. Despite residual intoxication, the ball of ionized air impacted Hellhound right at the base of her skull, followed by a loud 'ZZZT' sound that could have almost come from a cartoon. Hellhound's entire body spasmed for a brief moment, before she slid off her mutant dog in an unconscious heap.

 ** _And stay the fuck down_** , he thought to himself. All feelings of victory that he felt at that moment were quickly squashed when he heard the dogs' roars double in intensity. _Goddammit. Of course it's not that simple_ , he thought as the two dogs who were content to merely pin Aegis now fought to rip him apart as best they could. Crown cringed as he thought he heard one of Aegis's forearms snap. Gallant turned his attention away from the massive hound charging at him and Vista to take a few opportune shots at the dogs treating Aegis like a human chew toy. The blue calming bolts managed to have enough of an effect for Aegis to free himself from the enraged pair of canines, and he took the opportunity to get airborne.

The buzzing of the veritable plague surrounding them grew in intensity, redoubling their efforts against the wards. Gallant's costume's defenses were beginning to be overwhelmed, and Vista was quickly starting to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of bugs trying to sting and bite her. **_This is starting to get annoying. Someone is controlling those bugs, and they need to be taught that that shit ain't cool_** , Crown thought as he made the decision to run straight into the black smoke spewing out of the front of the bank, spreading his arms as he maintained a small aura to kill as many bugs on the way as he could.

 _That was so fucking dumb_ , he thought to himself as he felt the prongs of a taser forcing current through his neck.

The darkness was nigh-absolute. Crown couldn't see his own hands; he couldn't even see it when he concentrated to strengthen the aura around his left hand to add a bright flame to act as a torch. He even noticed the sound of his footsteps significantly diminished inside the black smoke. Crown was beginning to question how wise that earlier decision was when he felt something jam into his neck and shock him.

He fought to stay upright as the current ran through his body causing his limbs to spasm. Instead of trying to bring an arm up to blast the opponent shocking him, he focused instead on the two prongs and the current between them. Tapping into his own plasma, he concentrated and _shoved_ as much charge as he could into the positive terminal. He gritted his teeth as the current tripled in intensity briefly before it stopped all together, as if a circuit had shorted. The muted popping sound told him that the taser's cell had been completely fried.

Crown stood up straight, and began to turn in the direction that he felt the prongs come from, still completely blinded by the perfectly opaque smoke. _Grue's shit it really getting annoy-_

*SMACK*

Crown reeled as he felt a fist collide with his head, slightly behind his left ear. He staggered away from the blow, thankful that he was still somehow upright. _Fucking_ ** _ow_** _, a little higher and further back and I would have been snoring_ , he thought, right as he felt his right foot quickly cramp and turn inward. Crown fell to his side.

The cramp vanished almost as quickly as it's onset had occurred, and for a second Crown thought he heard a yelp of pain. **_Fuck this_** , he thought, digging into his reserve once more, and flaring his aura in a powerful short range burst around him. Or, at least it felt powerful. _It should have been brighter than that,_ he thought, standing back up. His eyes registered a small strobe flash that seemed to indicate that the darkness had also possibly dampened the propagation of the plasma burst. _Don't have that much left_ , he thought to himself, starting to feel exhaustion setting in as his reserve felt nearly depleted. _At least it bought me some breathing room._ ** _Now to put it to good use._**

Crown reached out in the direction he'd been punched from, and felt the shoulder of his second assailant, who was currently recoiling from the plasma burst. From what Crown could tell, the guy was wearing a thick leather jacket that would probably be a bit difficult to burn through with any kind of speed. _I could definitely cut through it, but not before Grue punches me in the goddamn head again_. _Or was Grue holding the taser?_ Regardless, he opted for a different approach.

Crown released the shoulder, and ducked down low. He quickly stepped into the second man, and rammed his shoulder into the man's stomach in the process, before securing a grip around his opponent's legs, below the hips. Bringing his other leg into position, he drove upwards with his legs, trying to lift who he thought might be Grue as high in the air as he could. **_The ground hits a lot harder than you do buddy_** , he thought, beginning the slamming motion.

His opponent was skilled enough to react, wrapping his legs around Crown's waist and reaching around Crown's head to secure a guillotine choke. He then torqued his body to drag Crown off balance, and rob the slam of much of its potential power, now merely having to contend with the work that gravity would do. The middle of his back hit the ground at the same time as Crown's head, and both combatants were briefly stunned.

Crown's mask had cracked on the impact, about a half inch above his right eye, and the broken material had given him a couple of solid cuts in that area. Fighting to escape the choke with one hand, he raised up on his feet to try and drive his other shoulder into his prone opponent's throat, concentrating the aura around that shoulder, and his own throat. The protective leather his opponent wore was starting to melt a bit, but not nearly as quickly as it should have.

The prone opponent released his grip slightly and unhooked his legs. He brought one foot towards the inside of Crown's left knee, and kicked outward, while chopping down on the outside of Crown's right thigh with the other, and rolled. Now underneath his opponent, Crown lost all leverage. His opponent secured a new chokehold, and this time Crown had no real way to fight back. He dug once more into what was left of his reserve, but the resulting wave barely bought him a fraction of a second's reprieve.

As he felt himself slipping, the much more volatile source flared. **_I could still kill them_**. The thought came unbidden from the back of his mind, as he briefly considered tapping into that other source. _Along with everyone one else still in the room,_ he countered with the more rational part of his mind in the few seconds he had left. _I fucking lost. Plain as day._

 _I deserved to lose this one._

-

Impulse anxiously watched the clock ticking, staring intensely at it as if he could will time to flow a bit faster. He would not be described as a patient person on a normal day; at that moment he resembled someone who'd downed 7 shots of espresso not 20 minutes earlier. He desperately wanted the job to start, if for no other reason than that he'd be able to distract himself from thinking too deeply about _what_ exactly he was doing.

A small little electronic jingle from Antares's phone mad Impulse jump a tad.

"Thank god, there's the green light," Impulse said, one hand shooting out to open the door.

"NO! YOU TAKE THAT BACK YOU MISERABLE CRETIN!" Antares shouted, looking at his phone.

Impulse paused, one foot already outside the vehicle. "The fuck was that about?" he inquired.

"This fucking asshole has the _gall_ to insinuate that I've stolen some nobody's look from three months ago, when the image he's commenting on is actually well over a year old, and I've simply reposted it as a throwback. I must now unleash a salvo of barbs targeting his intelligence and lineage in retribution, otherwise my reputation may never recover!"

Impulse stared. _Why the_ fuck _did I expect anything better out of the dude who insists that shaving cream is a mandatory item on a mission?_ He looked back at the clock, which stubbornly read 12:05 as if to spite him in particular. He sighed heavily, with nothing but the sounds of Antares furiously typing a response and Chimera gnawing on a bone to pass the time. _Its shit like this that makes you appreciate just how long a minute actually is. Holy ballsack._

Antares's _other_ phone buzzed as the actual greenlight signal came in at exactly 12:06:31. Antares checked it, and opened his door while haphazardly tossing his personal phone in the back of the van.

"Ow. That nearly hit me in the eye you prick," said Chimera, shifting down to a more suitable form for his task in the operation.

"Terribly sorry there chum," came the not-at-all convincing apology, as Antares stepped out of the vehicle, looking towards the telephone poles.

Antares walked down the block, following what looked to be the main power line feeding power to this particular block. He stopped at one of the poles which appeared to be slightly older than the others, with a bit of fungus having taken near the base. _Hmmmm, lets try something here,_ he thought, squatting down on one knee. He pretended to retie his shoe for a few seconds, making sure no one was in the immediate vicinity. _We're doing this at midday specifically because nobody is home at this time, but it never hurts to double check._

He held his hand over the fungus and drew upon his power. He'd noticed his power was finnicky at times with what it considered to be a valid target of entropic acceleration. It certainly didn't work too well on people or animals (he'd tried to age them a bit at one point), nor did it work on healthy plants. However, it seemed to work just fine on dead or rotting plant matter, as well as fungi. He focused and watched as the wood was subjected to decades of decay over the course of a minute.

Antares stopped and stood up to get out of the way as he heard the pole give a couple of sharp creaking sounds, and the wood warped. Walking to the other side, he braced against the pole, and began to shove towards the newly weakened side. As the pole began to fall, Antares started sprinting out of the way, not wanting to risk becoming the new shortest route to ground.

The pole fell, and most of the cables were severed in at least one place as a result. _It'll have to do,_ he thought to himself, turning around. _Now I just freewheel it outta here and ~nobody will knoooow~._  
He sent a quick text to Faultline.

-

Impulse felt his phone buzz.

-Power down. Patrol between Kent Ct and Cedar Ln. Any civs likely plainclothed detail. Nonlethal only.-

Impulse grimaced slightly, while he fished out a handful of sedative pellets he'd 'borrowed' from Artificer last night. _Guess I'm putting everyone to sleep to be sure then. Worst case scenario, I knock out an actual civilian, and they wake up 30 minutes later wondering what the fuck happened. No big deal._

He took off sticking to the backyards and pseudo-forested plots of land. _The blur wouldn't be terribly visible from the sidewalks, and so long as I keep quiet, nobody should be able to react to the surprise throat hugs._ He reached the boundary of his lookout responsibility, and was about to turn around when a couple began to round the corner. The woman was pushing a stroller.

 _Oh come the_ fuck _on. Why you gotta make my life difficult?_

He forced himself to calm down, and isolated two pellets, and moved up to a bush behind the shed of the second house on the street. He waited for the couple to move closer to his position.

He heard the baby in the stroller cry.

 _Fuck me, they have their fucking kid with them too,_ he mentally moaned. _Can an infant handle sedatives? Like will that fuck the kid up later in life, or outright kill him? Should probably ask Petyr...no wait fuck can't do that right now; head in the game, head in the game. Take out mom and dad first, worry about the kid later….and…..now._

He kicked off, sprinting straight at a spot just behind his intended victims. By the time either one processed the fact that there was movement in their peripheral vision, Impulse had already stopped barely a foot behind them, and reached around to jam a pellet against each of their mouths. He fought to muffle their voices as they slipped into unconsciousness. He reluctantly fished out another pellet.

 _Sorry kid, but it's for your own-you_ cheeky _motherfuckers._

Impulse peered inside the stroller to find not an infant, but a doll, along with a camcorder and a small tape recorder, which promptly produced another crying noise. He dragged both adults as quickly as he could to the bush he was waiting in, before going back for the stroller. _That_ , he grabbed and took a running start at his maximum speed, stopping to hurl it as hard as he could into the pseudo-forested area behind the house.

 _Assholes, making me think about moral dilemmas n shit,_ he griped before heading back onto his patrol route.

Chimera manifested a pair of human-esque hands in order to read the text that had been sent to him.

-House number is 15. Should be two guards + mom + girl inside. Neutralize NONLETHALLY. Open back door when you're done.-

Chimera dropped the phone, then thought for a second on what the most useful combination would be. _I want to get over to the house quickly, but I probably don't want to be on the ground. Let's go for a pidgeon body for flight….and a scorpion tail with some mixture of wasp and mosquito venom as a narcotic/paralytic._ His body began to morph into the much smaller form, and he took to the air.

He took the opportunity to take a few laps around the house to try and see if he could scout out any information ahead of time. _Mom seems to be in the living room, on the phone with someone….curtains drawn around the south-facing windows….HEY theres Dinah in the corner room….there's a really short guard...and all the other curtains are drawn...ok time t-OI FUCK OFF._

Another larger pidgeon had taken umbridge to Chimera's presence in it's territory, and was squaking at him loudly as he tried to land on the roof. Chimera tried to move away and give the rival pidgeon some room, but it kept harassing him.

 _Fine, you wanna play that way? I can play that way._

Chimera gained some altitude, and the other pidgeon returned to land on the roof. After climbing another couple dozen or so feet, Chimera pulled a half roll to the best of his ability, and began diving straight at his pesky avian foe. Annoyed, it took off to meet him. Chimera quickly swerved to one side, and drove his stinger straight into the other bird's chest. Within seconds, it dropped back onto the roof with a thud.

 _YEAH BITCH, WHO'S THE ALPHA MALE NOW?_

With his place on the roof no longer contested, he began shifting his body into something that could more easily work its way into a house. _A mouse body should do the trick_ , he thought. From his vantage point on the roof he briefly swapped out wasp venom for eagle vision. He could see Newter across the street dragging two unconscious people behind a tree, as well as Faultline doing... _something_...to the parked cars. His angle wasn't good enough to tell exactly _what_ she was doing. However, he could see that the car she was currently crouched behind contained at least 3 more unconscious guards.

 _Well doesn't look like too much to worry about on their end,_ he mused, putting back the knockout venom and scampering down towards the gutter.

He found his way inside the house through a hole in the wall just behind the garage. Judging by the mousetrap there along with it's unfortunate occupant, much of the infiltration work had already been done for him. _Convenient,_ he thought as he made his way through the small tunnel inside the walls of the house. He exited near what he assumed to be the kitchen, and crept towards the stairs.

It took him longer than he would have liked to get up the flight of stairs, but stealth was more important than speed at this stage. He waited just out of sight for the approaching guard on the upper floor to pass him. Following him closely, he waited for the guard to get to the end of the hall and turn the corner. He struck each ankle once, and waited for the venom to take effect. Thanks to the mosquito's natural narcotic properties, the guard didn't feel either sting. He took about three more steps and reached out to brace himself against the wall, before ultimately falling forward. He landed with a mild thud.

Chimera acted quickly, sprinting over to the man's neck, and stinging him right where his larynx should be. The man drew breath to try and shout for help, but he couldn't manage more than a low buzz from his vocal cords. Chimera scurried over and stung him once in each hand for good measure.

"Jerry! You all good up there?"

 _SHIT. SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCKING SHIT PLAN B._

Chimera abandoned the scorpion tail, and settled for fangs instead to house the venom, before hiding just outside the view of the stairwell. He morphed his body into something larger, settling on a housecat. He waited for the other guard to round the corner to check on his downed mate before sprinting down the stairwell.

Upon reaching the bottom and turning back towards the back door, he morphed again, settling for a werewolf-like form, something capable of opening he back door. He threw it open and stepped outside, out of sight of anyone still inside the house.

-

Antares was watching the back door when he saw the werewolf like form of Chimera exit. He dialed Impulse.

"Word to big bird. The monster has the cookies. I repeat, the monster has the cookies."

"...The fuck does that mean?" came the reply.

"IT MEANS THE DOOR'S OPEN NUMBNUTS; GRAB THE KID AND LET'S BAIL. And hit anyone in there with some of those pellets you stole to be safe."

Impulse turned on his heel and took off towards the Alcott's house. He stopped right next to Chimera.

"Situation?"

Chimera did his best not to jump. "One down, one more plus the mom still up. Kids in the room all the way on the right from the stairwell."

Impulse took off inside the house, slapping a pellet right into the terrified face of Dinah's mother not three feet away from the door. He bolted up the stairs, and deftly ducked under the taser fired by the guard that Chimera had left standing. In the blink of an eye, he'd hit that guard with a sedative as well, and slapped one on the previously incapacitated man lying on the ground, just as Antares had suggested, before turning back towards Dinah's room.

He kicked open the door, and hit Dinah with another sedative before she had time to scream.

-

The drive back to the truck stop was mercifully uneventful. Or, at least to Impulse, somewhat mercifully. There was a bit more traffic trying to leave the city proper than there was on their way into it earlier that morning, but that wasn't all too strange. Certainly there weren't any authorities breathing down their necks. _All things considered, the job had actually gone pretty damn smoothly_ , Impulse thought to himself, while trying desperately to think about something other than Antares's off-key singing, or the snoring kidnapee in the back being presided over by a literal monster. At least Chimera had altered himself to be somewhat fluffier and less threatening, taking the form of a siberian husky, with a snow leopard's tail.

"~VA-CA-TION, ALL I EVER WANT-ED, VA-CA-TION, HAAAVE TO GET AWAY~" Antares belted, shaking Impulse from his thoughts once again.

 _Oh god this is why I don't fucking do cars._

For all his callous attitude that he wore on a regular basis, Impulse couldn't shake the niggling feeling in the back of his mind that he'd crossed a line. _I steal money. I steal valuable objects. I don't, or rather_ ** _didn't_** _steal fucking kids._

They arrived at the previous rendezvouz point. Impulse felt a small wave of relief that the other van was in fact still there. Granted, they'd left it alone for a maximum of maybe two and a half hours, but there were no guarantees. Once both vans were parked and free of wayward glances, Impulse, Antares, and Chimera climbed into Faultline's van with Dinah.

"That went just about as well as one could reasonably hope. Good job. The payment should be wired to your accounts by 4 in the afternoon at the latest," Fautline said.

"I figured this would be a question best saved for after the job was done," Antares began, "but I remember hearing that you guys had other members? What happened there?"

Newter tensed slightly, while Gregor responded. "You are correct. Spitfire and Labyrinth were preoccupied with another task that needed to be performed concurrently. Given our success, their absence was no impediment. The same could be said of your team."

It was Impulse's turn to tense a bit. "They cited personal qualms," he said.

Gregor nodded slowly. "That would be detrimental indeed." He glanced at Dinah briefly. "Not that I'd hold it against them."

"...mrghhhh"

All eyes in the crowded van turned towards the slowly waking girl. She blinked twice, then turned several shades paler than would be considered healthy.

"What did you do to Mom?" she asked.

"Relax kid, no one was hurt. Your mom will be worried, but she'll be totally fine," Antares spoke.

Dinah shut her eyes quickly, then opened them. "93.871% chance you're right," she said.

Impulse and Chimera exchanged brief glances of concern with each other.

"...how do you know this, young one?" asked Gregor, in as gentle a voice he could manage.

"I keep seeing the numbers. The chances. I can't stop seeing them, and no one believed me. They didn't really believe me when I said something bad was going to happen to me and now it happened," she said, curling in on herself.

Faultline frowned hard, and muttered something under her breath, but no one quite caught it.

Antares tried once again to reassure the girl. "It won't be all that bad. You're just going to be used to apply political pressure to your uncle is all. It's not like the person who wanted you kidnapped is a pedophile or anything."

 _What. The_ ** _fuck. IS WRONG WITH YOU?_** thought Impulse as he angrily glared at Antares.

Dinah winced. "98.335% chance you're wrong about the first part," she began. She winced again, harder this time. "7.398% chance you're wrong about the second."

-

12:05 PM, Petyr's apartment

Morty was absently flipping through the channels on the TV while Ren cursed at her visor in the other room. He cycled back to the local news station and was about to flip away when it cut to a helicopter shot of Brockton Bay Central Bank, which was currently spewing a thick black smoke. Out front, the local wards had taken up position, joined by….

Morty blinked twice to make sure.

"Petyr!" he called to the tinker currently heating up his lunch.

"Ya," he said, walking into the main room. "What do you need?"

"Remember how you told Gabriel not to do anything stupid?" Morty said, pointing to the screen.


	7. Chapter 7

1.7

"Oh my fucking god," Petyr moaned while watching the screen. "Oh. My. Fucking. GOD. DAMN. IT." He buried his face in his hands again for a few brief moments.

"This. This is exactly the kind of shit I was afraid of."

"Well," Morty started, "to be entirely fair boss man did ask us to kidnap a kid. And kidnapping kids for possible pedophiles is strictly uncool no matter how you slice it. So, I can kinda understand where Crown's coming from."

"SO FUCKING WHAT?" Petyr shot back in annoyance. "You and I also turned down that job. Did you go out and start- wait what did you call him? I thought he was going by Jace?"

"Oh, the scrolly thingy on the bottom of the screen said he called himself Crown. No idea why, but it's certainly an improvement."

Petyr sighed. "Whatever. Point is, he's being a fucking retard; specifically the kind of retard that gets himself _or us_ killed."

"So….what do you want to do about it then?" asked Morty, still watching the screen as one of the monster dogs knocked Crown airborne. "Oooo. ouchtown, population: him."

"Jack fucking shit," Petyr stated. "He made his own bed, he's sleeping in it. I'm not helping him."

Ren poked her head out from the section of the spare room that she'd turned into her new personal workshop. The stench of soldering material, burning plastic, and burning plant matter wafted into the main room. "What'd Gabriel do again, and why aren't we helping him?" she asked.

"He picked a fight with a bunch of people robbing a bank for some reason, and he's losing."

Ren turned to watch the screen. She saw Crown stand back up hurl a bolt of what looked almost like ball lightning at the girl riding one of the overgrown dogs. The ball hit its target and a bright flash filled the center of the screen, followed by a very loud buzzing sound. Hellhound dropped off her mount in a heap immediately afterwards.

Ren turned back to Petyr. "I'm sorry, one more time; why _aren't_ we helping him?"

"Because he's an idiot?"

"Yeah, that's obvious but he's a _useful_ idiot," Ren countered. "I mean, look at the amount of energy he just unloaded on that guy!"

"Yeah, I am looking at it. What happens if he turns it on _us_ instead?" Petyr warned.

Ren shook her head. "He won't. Or at least he shouldn't so long as none of us do anything particularly assholish. Maybe Antares or Impulse might eventually piss him off. Anyway, now put that kind of potential into a battery with a couple of megacoulumbs of capacity, along with a solenoid array with a tungsten core and a bit of a Faraday cage-like thing around the barrel, along with a parabolic dish at the end for the focal point, and-"

"So what do you want us to do, Ren?" Morty asked, cutting off Ren's ranting.

"Killjoy," she said, frowning at him. "Give me a minute or two. What was the name of the group doing the robbing again? They just flashed in on the screen a moment ago and I missed it."

"I think they were called the 'Undersiders' or something. Sounded dumb to me," Morty supplied.

"Gotcha." Ren put her visor back on and it thrummed to life.

Petyr shook his head. "You ok with this, Morty?"

Morty simply shrugged in response. "Ren's ideas are usually pretty good. Aside from that one time she had me fix the antenna during a lightning storm, she hasn't steered me too wrong so far."

"If you wore the rubber gloves you would've been _fine_ ," Ren mumbled, more to herself than anything else.

After a couple dozen more seconds of silence, Petyr was starting to fidget a bit.

"Any pr-"

"Shut up and be patient," Ren snapped while holding up a hand in his direction.

"Let the witch cast her magic spells in peace," Morty stage-whispered with a chuckle. Ren wordlessly held up a middle finger in response as her visor's whine climbed slightly higher.

"Did Gabriel run inside the building at all?" Ren asked.

Morty took a quick glance over at the screen. "Uhh...yeah actually. Just now."

"Hmm. That changes a few things." Her visor's electronic whine climbed in pitch and intensity. After a few more seconds, the humming abruptly ceased. Ren jumped to her feet and dialed up the opacity on her visor, walking briskly towards the door. Morty immediately grabbed his mask and went to follow her.

"Wait, wait, hold up, what's going on?" asked Petyr, grabbing one of his spare masks and gun more on reflex than conscious decision.

"No fucking idea," Morty stated nonchalantly, "but Dagger normal does Dagger this when there's very a only wind short time window get get to done things dow."

 _Has either of them ever thought about getting that checked out?_ Artificer mused as they hurried down the steps. _Maybe see Cranial or Pana- no wait, she doesn't do brains. If I could access an MRI scan of his brain, I might be able to whip something up. Might not even take all that much._

Dagger broke into a half-jog towards the RV that Cloak had parked halfway down the street. "Cloak you're driving."

"Aye-aye, cap'n," he said, running ahead of her to open the door and start the engine. Artificer hadn't even finished closing the door before Cloak floored it.

"Alright, what the fuck is the huge rush here, exactly?" asked Artificer as he peeled himself off the floor of the RV and into a seat.

"Cloak, you're heading to the parking garage on 37th and Main st. GPS already has the location. Artificer, I ran about 10 trillion rough simulations on the outcome of that fight given what my web crawler could dig up on the Undersiders, with a few worst-case scenario assumptions made on their capabilities. Most of them have our buddy losing-"

Cloak turned hard and jammed on the brakes, sending the vehicle into a screeching slide around the upcoming corner, before gunning the accelerator again, narrowly avoiding several honking cars. Dagger braced herself in her seat in a practiced manner, her expression remaining neutral as she waited for Cloak to finish the maneuver. Artificer on the other hand was wholly unprepared, and wound up on the floor of the RV for the second time in 10 minutes.

"Fuck man! You ever think it'd be nice to warn someone before you pull that shit?" he stated as he climbed back into his seat, wishing he hadn't neglected his seatbelt.

"Nice? Probably," Cloak began in a surprisingly calm voice for someone who was committing several moving violations in rapid succession. "Necessary? Wouldn't be if you were wearing the seatbelt. They ain't for show y'know."

"Anyway," Dagger resumed, "fight should be over by the time we get to the garage, at which point the ambulances should be dispatched; most likely number is 5. Two are coming from Brockton Bay General which is north of the bank, with two more inbound from the PRT headquarters for Hellhound, and possibly one other member, though unlikely. The other one is likely coming from the BBU Medical center to the south. Optimal route puts its return trip crossing in front of the garage about…..8 minutes and 40 seconds after we get there, given how Cloak is driving."

"Given how this asshole is driving, I'd revise that 'when' to an 'if'," Artificer grumbled. "And why are they sending one from the University med center? Why not grab another one from BB General?"

"Iunno," Dagger responded, "but that seems to be the go-to pattern whenever independent non-villain capes get injured. That's the way it seems to work in Philly, Columbus, Nashville, and Memphis at any rate, and nothing really tells me Brockton Bay would be all that different. In any event, we can always improvise."

Artificer did not look convinced whatsoever. "Alright. How are we going to get into the garage without anyone noticing or asking questions?"

"Easy. We're not."

"I'm still missing the 'how' part of the equ-"

 ** _HOOOOOOOOOOONNNK_**

"- _FUCKING HELL DUDE!"_ Artificer yelped as Cloak blew through a red light with just enough speed to avoid getting T-boned by an oncoming cement mixer.

"Relaaaaax," Cloak drawled with one hand on the wheel. "Dagger makes good shit," he stated, patting the GPS display as if it were a pet.  
Dagger sighed in annoyance.

-

"Cloak, what part of 'between 250 and 300 feet away from the garage entrance' didn't make it through that thick fucking skull of yours?" Dagger griped as the RV came to a stop just a few car lengths away from the garage entrance.

"The part where you wanted us to walk an extra football field to get where we're going?' Cloak supplied as he killed the engine.

"Goddammit you dipshit, the car's in range of the camera swivel! Now I've got more footage to erase!"

"That's….not going to be too much of a problem is it?" asked Artificer with a hint of nervousness in his voice.

"No, it'll just be a _completely unnecessary pain in my ass,_ " replied Dagger as she continued to glare at Cloak. "Well, time to be useful. Artificer, this may feel a bit tingly."

Artificer felt goosebumps forming all over his skin as a wave of _something_ that felt hot and cold at the same time washed over him. His limbs started to feel just a little bit prickly too, as if he'd been sitting funny for a long period of time prior. _Not the weirdest feeling in the world at least,_ he thought to himself as they quietly approached the guard manning the service booth.

Artificer crept up to get a good point blank shot and caught the guard while he was still in his chair. The stunned employee jerked in shock, looking for his attacker, one hand coming up the to the spotthe pellet had struck. He had enough consciousness left to stand up and take a few steps before collapsing in an unconsious heap. Cloak caught him, and set him back in the chair as gently as he could. _With any luck, Dagger'll make it look like he simply fell asleep on the job completely of his own volition_ , Artificer mused. _Worse plans have been made, I'll give her that._

"You almost in yet? Need I need a soon rest," Cloak said as Dagger fiddled away with some of the wires below the guard's desk.

"Gimme a couple more...seconds….ok...ok you can drop the field now."

Cloak let out a sigh and took a couple of deep breaths while shaking his arms out. "That feels better. What's our timetable looking like Dag?"

Artificer looked at the tinker currently sitting on the floor with several wires running from her visor into the mess of cables under the desk. After she didn't answer for several seconds, he nudged her with his foot, earning a startled shriek.

" _Don't fucking do that!_ " she snapped.

"How much longer till the ambulance gets here?" Cloak repeated.

"Oh. Right. That. You got...exactly 73 seconds. I'm good here; I'll be done in a couple of minutes. Cloak, grab the RV and park it in the middle of the road in the most obnoxious manner you possibly can. Artificer, stay behind the wheel when they arrive so the driver has someone to yell at; once he starts yelling, Cloak you drop him so he doesn't drive away. Pop the back open, grab Crown, and we fucking book it."

Cloak smacked Artificer on the back as he began to jog towards the RV. "C'mon, you heard the woman, time's a wastin'," he said in a sing-song voice. Artificer forced himself not to audibly groan as he followed Cloak out.

Inside the vehicle, Artificer was nervously glanicing between his watch and the road which the ambulance was supposed to be approaching from while pretending to completely fail at performing a U-turn between a couple of parked SUVs. Between the three vehicles, the sidewalks remained the sole means on traversing the street from one end to the other. Artificer calmed down a bit as he began to hear the wail of a siren approaching. Cloak caught it out of the corner of his eye.

"I told you several times Dagger knows what she's doing," he said, as the ambulance turned down the road.

"Well excuse me for not taking your word at face value when I've barely known you for….what...less than 36 hours at this point?" he shot back. "After all, I trusted Crown to _NOT_ run off and pick a fight -a stupid fight mind you- and look what happened."

"Less talky more distracty," Cloak said before vanishing. Artificer rolled his eyes as the Ambulance rolled to a stop a few yards away from the RV. _That siren is seriously uncomfortable at this range,_ he thought absent-mindedly.

Cloak ran up as quickly as he could to the driver's side of the ambulance, not bothering to be quiet; nothing was going to pick up his footsteps amidst the siren's wail. In fact, the driver was too busy pounding on the horn to notice Cloak opening the door.

"...Yeah, we just ran into a small snag. Some asshole is blocking the road…..yeah no you gotta see this Jill, you think Mark doesn't know how to drive; this dude should had his licence revoked a week ago. He managed to wedge himself between two SUVs...seriously you gotta wonder sometimes- this fucking asshole just...wait a min-"

Cloak reached through his power for the base of the driver's neck and squeezed. Her breath caught and she slumped sideways out the open door. Cloak caught her so that she wouldn't hit the pavement, just long enough for Artificer to line up a sedative shot to make sure she stayed down. The passenger had tried to reach for the dangling radio, presumably to call for help, but Cloak hit her shoulder with another nerve shock, preventing her from using her hands until Artificer knocked her out as well.

Artificer reached into the ambulance and popped back doors open. The EMT tending to Crown turned around to see the paintball gun pointed at him. He raised his hands in surrender.

"What's wrong with him?" Artificer snapped. "Gimme the cliff notes version. Now."

"Uhhh, he's got 3 bruised ribs, uhhh several dozen stings of various insects but showing no allergic reactions, possible concussion, and a fracture above the eye. And a BAC of .11," he stammered. "Please don't hurt me."

"We won't. You'll be fine in about 30 minutes," Artificer said as he shot him with a pellet.

-  
Back in the apartment, Petyr began to set up a quick and dirty rig in the central room. Grabbing a seat, he and morty dumped Gabriel into it. Petyr did so with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. He reapplied a fresh set of bandages and gauze to Gabriel's injured eye socket, and set up an IV, which he then filled with some strange fluorescent blue liquid, before setting up a few more processes on his workbench.

A few minutes after the drip began making its way into Gabriel's bloodstream, he woke with a bit of a start.

"Whe- Oh. Right. How'd I get here?"

"We stole you out of an ambulance," Ren responded between bites of a pizza roll. "I honestly expected you to be more banged up."

"...That asshole finally awake?" called Petyr from the bathroom. After he finished washing his hands, Petyr stormed out of the bathroom right up to Gabriel and punched him in the uninjured side of his face.

Ren rolled her eyes, while Morty stood in silence, watching Petyr with a hint of trepidation on his face. Silence reigned for a few moments while Gabriel sat back up again.

"I guess I ear-"

 ** _*SMACK*_**

Morty flinched a tad. Petyr rubbed his knucles after second punch, anger still etched into his face.

"What the fuck did I tell you? WHAT THE _FUCK_ DID I FUCKING TELL YOU?" he yelled.

Gabriel stared back at him as calmly as he could. "I'm sorry."

Petyr reared back his fist again. Morty jumped up to stop him this time.

"Petyr, calm the fuck down. Seriously. Gabriel kinda fucked up, but it wasn't even all that bad. He admitted it. Getting angrier won't solve anything. What's got you so riled up about it anyway?"

Petyr glared at Morty and then back at Gabriel for an uncomfortable length of time, with a hint of pain visible on his face amidst the anger. After a few more moments, he took a deep breath to calm down.

"Why'd you do it?" Petyr spoke after another period of silence.

"Have you ever seen something bad happen to someone who didn't deserve it?" Gabriel asked.

"If that's a rhetorical question, please get to the point before I hit you again," Petyr said.

"Given that situation, which is worse? Wanting to do something about it, but not being able to? Or having the ability to intervene, and _choosing_ not to?"

Petyr looked at him, somewhat softer this time.

"Everyone in this room felt the first kind of pain when Coil gave the kidnapping offer. And don't tell me it didn't bother you guys as well, it was written all over your fucking faces. You wanted to know why I did what I did? The second type of pain is magnitudes worse."

Petyr sighed. "Rest up. Coil's bound to call later with another job for us. Hopefully this one doesn't involve kidnapping kids."

A little while later, Leo, John, and Chimera came back from their task. John wore a look on his face akin to someone who got kicked out of an interview not five minutes into it. Chimera  
Leo, John, and Chimera had gotten back from their task a little later in the day. Dissappointment was written all over John's face, like he'd just gotten out of an interview where he was told 5 minutes in he wasn't getting the job. Chimera simply made a beeline for the fridge.

"How'd it go?" asked Morty.

John stared at him. "It went off without a hitch. Coil now is in possession of 1 Dinah Alcott."

"O...k...anything else happen?" Morty inquired. _I thought John didn't give a shit so long as he was paid. Maybe child snatching finally crossed a line?_

"Yep. Apparently the kid's a math prodigy or something who can give extremely accurate chances about future events," supplied Leo. Where John was somewhat dejected about the whole affair, Leo's mood remained weirdly aloof as always. "Kid was shaken up by the whole process, but that's to be expected isn't it? Besides, she'll be fine; at least she will if Coil sticks to the theory that pressure is more easily applied by threatening the Mayor's daughter than actually harming her."

"She's not a _math prodigy_ you dumbfuck, she's a parahuman," John said, not moving from the seat he collapsed in. "Secondly, that's one of the stupidest theories I've ever heard regarding hostages and the like. Thirdly, it should be blatantly obvious to a third grader let alone you, Leo, that the whole political angle is a crock of shit that smells worse than any byproduct of Petyr's so far. Coil has no intention of letting go of a _goddamn oracle_ now that he has one."

"Still don't know why that's bothering you all that much," said Chimera between bites of a pork shoulder. "Long as Coil pays us, what's the problem? In fact, isn't this a good thing from our perspective?"

"Right up until the point where he decides he doesn't need us anymore," countered Petyr. "Leaving aside the qualms we have with kidnapping a kid, from a job security perspective that kind of power spike is at least mildly concerning, no?"

Chimera stopped mid bite to look at Petyr, then back at his food. "I suppose you have a point there," he said, slowing his eating pace a bit. "Still, we're not gonna have to worry about that kinda thing in the immediate future are we?"

"I wouldn't necessarily worry about that for another 3 weeks or so," said Ren as she walked out of the room she'd been working in. "And that's assuming nothing changes. Let's see what happens with the next couple of jobs."

"Fair. Where's Gabriel by the way?"

"In here," came Gabriel's voice from Ren's workshop. Petyr and Chimera took a look inside.

Gabriel was seated in a chair surrounded by several odd looking sensors and scanners of different types. He had one arm resting on the table next to him, palm up with several wires actually puncturing the skin in various places, while he idly flexed his power. Several small cameras were focused on his hand as he made the plasma dance this way and that way. "Ren took the opportunity to get in touch with her inner mad scientist."

-

Gabriel picked up his phone on the second ring. "Coil."

"Hello Jace. Or should I say Crown?"

Gabriel didn't answer.

"That stunt you pulled was incredibly irritating. I do not take issue with your refusal to cooperate in the kidnapping operation, but I _do_ take issue with you interfering in my other affairs. Understand that the reason you are still breathing is because counterintuitively, your attempted interference turned out to be beneficial to making sure the kidnapping went smoothly." Coil paused, before continuing in a colder tone. " _Do not do something like that again."_

"Understood," Gabriel answered in as level a tone he could manage.

"Good. Now fetch your team. I have a new assignment for you."


End file.
